Helen Zille predicts the ANC’s downfall in the 2029 elections, citing the loss of Cyril Ramaphosa as a key factor. She envisions the DA rising as South Africa’s leading party, competing mainly with the EFF. However, this bold forecast overlooks complex variables, including voter turnout trends, racial divides, and the DA’s stagnant growth. RW Johnson suggests that Zille’s predictions may be overly optimistic and out of touch with South Africa’s political realities.
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By R.W. Johnson
Helen Zille has boldly predicted that the ANC is crumbling, that it is likely to fall to 25% in the 2029 elections because it will by then have lost its “trump card”, Cyril Ramaphosa, and that the DA is likely to replace the ANC as the largest party in the South African political system. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___ The DA’s real competitor will be the EFF “because the EFF knows what it stands for and we know what we stand for”. The disintegration of the ANC would occur because the loss of complete state power will make it unable to dispense patronage. “And when a party is only held together by patronage it’s only a matter of time before it disintegrates”- though there are actually cases of such parties lasting for generations, for example the PRI which ruled Mexico uninterruptedly for 71 years (1929-2000). Zille states that it is quite certain that no South African party will ever achieve the 50% mark again. Again, this is a simple guess: no one can forecast future election results with any certainty. The DA, Zille believes, will simply have to stay in government and show the people how well it can govern and this will lead the non-racist democratic centre to consolidate around the DA. This is merely a DA Goldilocks dream.
In fact there are so many unpredictable variables in this game that making predictions is unwise. Start with the fact that the majority of South Africans in 2024 either didn’t bother to register to vote or, if they did register, didn’t bother to vote. Turnout fell by 7.43% since 2019 and if present trends continue turnout could go under 50% next time. White voters are older than other groups, so by 2029 they will be worse affected by differential mortality. On the other hand, turnout rates among white voters are spectacularly higher than for other groups.
Any prediction that the DA will overtake the ANC is particularly bold since it assumes that the racial cleavage will collapse. There is not much sign of this. In 2019 the ANC and EFF together won 68.3% of the vote while in 2024 the ANC, EFF and MKP together won 64.28% of the vote. So if one treats the three varieties of African nationalism as a singe bloc the racial cleavage held pretty steady.
The really big question for 2029 is what will happen to the MKP vote ? It already seems likely that the party has peaked. It is poorly organized, is not equipped to make much impact in Parliament and its only real policy seems to be a grievance that Jacob Zuma is no longer President. It has failed to gain any leverage even in KwaZulu-Natal. All power within the party is centralised in Zuma’s hands and he isn’t even in Parliament – a recipe for chaos. Zuma can hold a few rallies and do his song-and-dance routine – but that’s about it. The MKP has not managed to put down local roots. Everything suggests that it will slowly collapse. Its Waterloo will probably come in 2026 when it fails to put up much of a show in the local elections and its MPs realise that they are facing a complete rout in 2029.
MKP’s voters came mainly from the ANC and EFF. In 2024 they were as disillusioned as were African voters everywhere in South Africa but in addition they felt that with the exit of Zuma and Zweli Mkhize the national ANC had largely excluded the Zulu elite from power. There is clearly an opportunity for the IFP, EFF, ANC or another Zulu-led party to scoop up some of the MKP vote in 2029. Despite Zille’s predictions, it is quite possible that the ANC vote could increase, not fall, in 2029.
However, other trends are also at work. The deterioration of virtually all towns and cities under ANC rule and the more positive outcomes experienced by towns under DA control seems certain to continue. This will be accompanied by the further shrinkage of the ANC’s urban vote.
Forecasting the EFF’s evolution is more difficult and Zille’s remark that the EFF and DA both know what they stand for is an inadequate guide. All else apart, the EFF has veered wildly and is a classically opportunist party in which the enrichment of its leaders is always a major motive. It is more sensible to begin with the fact that from 1960 through till 1990 the ANC was the leader of a violent insurrectionist struggle. This was also, hardly coincidentally, the period of the SACP’s maximum influence over the ANC. A whole generation of African nationalists was raised amidst that insurrectionary period. Then, quite suddenly, the armed struggle was called off and a peaceful compromise was negotiated. Thus the whole insurrectionary tradition of the liberation movement was cut off in mid-air.
This had a dramatic effect on the movement’s political culture, creating a continuing constituency for a radical, Marxisant, anti-white populism. And this insurrectionist tradition had no time for law and order, let alone constitutional rule. At first this tradition was represented by Harry Gwala, Peter Mokaba and Winnie Mandela but as that older generation died out Julius Malema incarnated it into party form. He has cunningly wed to that the idea of “economic freedom”, which has nothing to do with economic development as in normal African nationalist thought. Instead it refers to the simple acquisition, by whatever means, of others’ assets. So Malema favours the nationalisation of all land and industry, a no man’s land of corrupt SOEs in which the looting EFF elite would become immensely rich.
This is, of course, a false prospectus. The great political change has taken place peacefully in South Africa – and there is now no need for insurrectionist politics. The ANC likes to talk of being “revolutionary” but it has long since been unclear what that means other than all-round African predominance. The other organisations favouring “revolution” – the SACP and Cosatu – have withered into insignificance. So the fact is that the future is far from clear for the EFF. Thus far it has positioned itself as a populist anti-white party which condemns the ANC for having failed to live up to its promises. This was viable enough while the ANC was so obviously and visibly failing. If, however, the GNU manages to increase economic growth the EFF could find itself in difficulty. And this is even without taking account of the fact that both its key leaders may be headed for jail.
Both the boldest and the least likely of Zille’s predictions is that the DA will expand to take over the centre ground from the ANC. Previous election results show no evidence of such a trend. In 2014 the DA won 4,091,584 votes (22.23%). In 2019 under Mmusi Maimane it lost 470,000 votes and fell to 20.77%. In 2024 it lost a further 117,000 votes and rose only to 21.81%. In 2024 its total vote still stood at more than half a million votes fewer than it had achieved a decade before. Overall, and allowing for turnout variations, the party has done no better than stand still for ten years.
Above all, this complete stasis has occurred at a time when the ANC vote was collapsing from 62.15% in 2014 to 40.18% in 2024. The fact that the DA failed to benefit at all from this avalanche of disabused ANC voters is a clear and strong indication that the DA is likely to find it very difficult to capture more of the centre ground from the ANC. It is difficult to see what, other than blind faith, can lie behind Zille’s central hypothesis or her equally bold prediction that the ANC will simply wither away.
There is an alternative which is worth considering. For nearly four hundred years the white minority and, latterly, the other racial minorities, have provided the main impetus to economic and political development in South Africa. They provided the technical and managerial skills and the entrepreneurial know-how without which development would not have occurred. Inevitably, there were many injustices in this history. The interests of the African majority were largely neglected and they were ruthlessly exploited. Yet, at the same time, what the Communist intellectual, Jack Simons, called “a common society” emerged, so that not just the minorities but the African masses too became part of the only developed modern society on the continent, an extraordinary and unique achievement..
Yet this enormous overall success was always unbalanced and undermined by the sheer inequality and exploitation of the African majority. Africans were poorer, less educated, more rural and they could not vote. For generations they were the passive recipient of rules made by others. This inequality was an increasing impediment to the country’s development: a fundamental re-balancing and re-integration was required. This finally occurred with the arrival of universal suffrage and the abolition of apartheid. Inevitably, this work of re-balancing has continued but over the space of thirty years it has become clear that African nationalism has failed comprehensively. The country’s cities and towns are deteriorating beyond repair. Crime and corruption are out of control. A crazy mixture of government policies has seen governance grind almost to a halt. The economy has ceased to grow and per capita income is falling year after year. Unemployment is at record levels.
The only way out of this disastrous situation is to adopt more liberal economic policies and to make full use of the skills and expertise of the whole population. Attempts to artificially privilege African groups – both in the labour and the commercial market – have had disastrous effects. The ANC needs to live up to its promise to build a non-racial society. Yet at the same time democratic governance can only be preserved if it reflects the fact of the overwhelming demographic dominance of the Africans. In other words the best form of government for South Africa is something like the present GNU in which the DA provides an indispensable liberal drive but where ANC electoral predominance is reflected in governing institutions. It is not easy to reach such a balance and South Africa has done well to reach a point where such a compromise is possible after a tumultuous but in many ways disastrous first thirty years.
This is South Africa’s only way out of a ruinous decline. And this new GNU balance has to be maintained for many years. Politically this might well see a gradual fusion of the ANC and DA. Already the furious reaction to the GNU of the SACP, EFF and MKP have shown how these more disruptive forms of African nationalism have no workable idea of how to govern the country and organise its economy. If they come to power the country will simply spiral downward till it falls apart.
Such a DA-ANC political fusion could only happen over a lengthy period of co-operative governance and ideally one would want to see a growing economic recovery over a period of decades. But for that to happen the more opportunistic rent-seeking elements of the ANC have to be faced down and prevented from breaking this crucial union. If, simply put, Cyril Ramaphosa is followed in the presidency by Paul Mashatile or anyone like him, all bets are off.
The new stability and possible economic recovery of the GNU iwill only persist if the ANC leadership recognises that the GNU route presents it with its only way out of a catastrophic and historic failure. It is by no means clear from the ANC’s post-election ruminations, that the party has yet absorbed this basic fact. In forming the GNU the ANC has had to break its alliance with the SACP. It is essential that this rupture should be maintained until the SACP fades away, as it will.
Nobody knows how the party system will evolve. Helen Zille’s predictions seem unrealistic and all she has achieved by trumpeting her belief that the DA will displace the ANC is to anger and alarm the DA’s partners in the GNU, especially since she emphasises that she is working towards the death of the ANC. This is only comprehensible if her aim is to sabotage the GNU. It is clear that wiser spirits will be needed in the DA as well as the ANC.
Read also:
- Helen Zille on Joburg chaos: Gayton “played” DA’s Moonshot partners, always defaults to supporting ANC
- 🔒 PREMIUM: BNC#5: Helen Zille exacts revenge on detractors; shares inside story on coalitions; and more (Part 1)
- Nicholas Woode-Smith: The ANC’s deliberate failures – South Africa’s path to collapse
