Alec Hogg [00:02] Seven of eight metros hung. The only one that's going to be run by one political party is Cape Town. But on top of that, roughly 140 councils out of 231 are also without a winner. And they've got a fortnight to sort it out, "they" being the politicians. At the centre of it all, we have a president whose favourite move is, well, doing nothing.

William Saunderson-Meyer titled his Jaundiced Eye column this week "No place to hide for Ramaphosa". His argument: the kicking of the can down the road stops here. The ANC got under 31% of the national vote last week, half of what it got just a dozen years ago. Its whole extended political family combined, and that includes MK and the EFF, can't reach 50% anymore. And the most interesting result, according to William anyway, may have come not from Johannesburg, but from Howick.

William, good to be talking with you. I loved your column this week. It encapsulated so much of what many of us are thinking. But let's start with that Howick result, because you gave quite a lot of airtime to Chris Pappas, especially in the latter part of your column. And you made some very strong points there that are well worth those politicians doing the negotiations right now remembering.

WSM [01:51] What is so interesting about the Howick result is that it encapsulates something I really believe, and that is that the road to electoral success in South Africa is not an ideological one anymore. It is simply doing your job, providing the basic services that people want and need, and growing the economy.

Firstly, it's worth saying what the uMngeni municipality comprises. It's basically a socially conservative, semi-rural area. Howick is a little market town. Two-thirds of the electorate is black, Zulu obviously, and it's the only municipality that has ever voted for the DA [in KwaZulu-Natal]. And again, this time it is the only one in KwaZulu-Natal.

When he won in 2021, and what is worth adding into that equation is that Pappas is a gay white man in a very socially conservative environment. So if you wanted to construct the most unlikely political victory, those are the ingredients you would mix together. Yet out of that, in 2021, Pappas won the municipality with a single-seat majority. In the end it hinged on 42 votes.

Alec Hogg [03:07] Mm-hmm.

WSM [03:31] That was the difference between making it and not making it. He spent at least months, maybe years, dodging from house to house, not sleeping in the same place twice, because there were threats against his life, and they were credible threats. His deputy in the municipality was murdered in front of his wife and children. Since then another councillor has been killed.

There were very violent protests when the municipality tried to enforce payment for municipal services, except for those who are indigent. So everything was against him. The whole flow was that he made it by a fluke of circumstance, and it was very unlikely to be replicated. Yet in the meantime, he turned the municipality around, delivered services, and delivered services to the black community.

This time, instead of getting 48% of the vote, I think he got 64% of the vote. It's an extraordinary turnaround. And the key lesson to take from that is that it's not about ideology. It's not about deeply ingrained racial attitudes. Yes, ideology plays a role, and deeply ingrained racial attitudes are there and they certainly make a difference. But they can be overcome by honest politicians doing their jobs.

It's a lesson that his own party needs to learn, or certainly is very aware of, since it is one of the reasons why it's been so successful in Cape Town. But it's certainly not a lesson that the ANC has learnt, or really seems very interested in learning.

Alec Hogg [05:17] It was also a municipality that, we understand, MK really targeted. It was "let's get Pappas out, that will send a statement". And they failed dismally.

WSM [05:29] It held. Well, MK got five of the seats in the council. I'm not sure whether it was through the geographical wards. I don't think so; I think the ANC won the geographical wards. The ANC got four. The ANC, I think, shed five wards to the DA. So it's an interesting thing there again: that the DA can take seats from the ANC, and it can resist a very powerful MK.

Let's put it this way: it might not be a surprise that the DA took the seats from the ANC, because the ANC is a depleting force. But MK is rampant in KwaZulu-Natal, and it has an ability to mobilise on ethnic nationalist grounds, and does so. Again, that he managed to withstand that is astonishing.

Alec Hogg [06:24] You talk about the ANC being the shunned wallflower at its own ball. Has it lost its agency, or is the media just ignoring that it still is the party with the most votes?

WSM [06:39] I think the media is missing something here. The ANC has not made many statements. It's got Panyaza Lesufi who says he doesn't want to have anything to do with the DA. Well, we could have guessed that one. It's not the major party within the key metros, but it is still the biggest party in the country.

And it has a lot of agency, if for no other reason than that it runs the national government. It is the most powerful player in the national government. So the ANC is not going to go quietly into that good night. For any sensible party seeking to build coalitions, the ANC is the hub around which all of us should be turning. And the question there is not to put together coalitions just because you can put the numbers together to get power; it is to find like-thinking parties and people to work with. Otherwise those coalitions won't last.

Alec Hogg [07:54] So a DA-ANC coalition: how do you rate its chances of lasting?

WSM [07:58] It's something we've discussed here before. Even a few weeks back we were talking about that being the likely first choice that could be made, and so it's played out. To me it has an arithmetic logic: negotiating nationally to make local arrangements, deciding how they will carve up the various posts.

They would control almost all the metros, and they would control something like 75% of the councils in the country. So there is an arithmetic logic. It's tidy, it's very simple. You're dealing with one partner, two partners who know one another. They have organised together, they've been working together, with possibly "bumps and scrapes" obviously between them, but they've been working together for two years. They know one another, they know how far they can trust one another. They certainly know that they don't distrust one another to the degree, say, that the DA and ActionSA distrust one another, or the degree to which ActionSA probably should distrust the ANC, and vice versa.

So there's a history there that makes it attractive, and it is also the best solution for the country, and that's a big if: if the ANC takes on more of the economic good sense that is the basis of DA policy. The country needs to get out of its economic decline. If they can negotiate around that, about the ability to deliver basic services in a growing economy, it's the ideal solution.

Alec Hogg [10:01] William, it's come up twice now, in the interview I had with Herman Mashaba and again with Corné Mulder, that the DA, according to them, spent R200 million on its campaign in Gauteng. By comparison, ActionSA's budget for the whole country was R80 million. Now, R200 million is not a drop in the ocean.

WSM [10:22] Mm-hmm.

Alec Hogg [10:31] The people or the companies or the organisations who put that money in are presumably going to want a return on their investment. And so the question really has to be: would this not be an irresistible force for stability, especially in Gauteng, with that stability taking the form of a DA-ANC coalition, almost being forced on the DA side anyway, from the outside?

WSM [10:56] Or possibly forced on both sides from the outside. I don't know what the DA spent on it. It sounds like the kind of number that Ramaphosa spent on his re-election as president of the ANC. But it was the kind of number that was being bandied around at the time, 200 million. And that money, we know, largely came from corporate South Africa.

And indeed the GNU that exists is the result of enormous pressure from corporate South Africa and from donors on both those parties. This is certainly a route along which corporate South Africa has tried to herd those two parties, to channel them down that choice. So yes, I think it's a very good point. I don't know if it's an undesirable point. These are interest groups, and they're entitled to seek to influence the course that the country takes. But that must be a big, big pressure, especially for the DA, which doesn't maybe have access to the same offshore treasure chests of money sitting in shady foreign places that the ANC has admitted gets brought across every now and then to bail it out of financial trouble.

But I must say, at 200 million, corporate South Africa didn't get a very good bang for its buck. The results flatter the DA, in the sense that the DA has done well where it really matters. But if you look at the totals, the DA's performance has been pretty flat.

Alec Hogg [12:19] Hmm.

Alec Hogg [12:42] So who did well then in this election, from your perspective?

WSM [12:47] Well, ActionSA did well. It basically more than doubled its share of the national vote. But it is very limited, so again, these statistics need to be placed into context. ActionSA, I think, moved from 2.8% to close on 6%. That's a really good performance, and it took wards from the ANC in Johannesburg and in the townships in Gauteng. But nationally its performance was very poor; there was nothing much to write home about. So it's a geographically limited party.

All of them, except for the ANC, which has certainly admitted that it's been a catastrophic election for it, will tell you they're very happy with the progress they've made. But the fact is ActionSA should be very happy with what it's achieved.

And the DA should be pleased with what it's done, where it's done it, but it's bouncing along under a ceiling. It had hoped to get 30%. It's not even close to that. It had hoped to get 40% or more in Johannesburg and Tshwane. And despite having certainly memorable candidates, again it hasn't got there.

Alec Hogg [14:20] So if you were a bookmaker, put yourself at the racecourse or at a betting shop now: how would you rate the odds of a DA-ANC coalition, a DA-ActionSA coalition, an ANC-and-the-others coalition?

WSM [14:26] Shall we open a book today?

WSM [14:46] Wow, it's a really tough question, Alec.

Alec Hogg [14:49] Who's the hot favourite, put it that way?

WSM [14:54] It really depends on the ANC: whether Ramaphosa and his national executive leadership, because it does revolve around them, make a decision with the heart or with the mind. The heart of the ANC still beats very strongly with the extended family of bad boys who have been thrown out, or have walked out and flounced out: the EFF, MK, and now you even have the SACP twittering on the edges there.

So the heart of the ANC wants to take that route for very good reasons, not only because of the emotional ties of the struggle, but because that is the route that will continue to deliver the patronage politics the ANC has thrived on. It'll continue to deliver the corruption, maybe tidied-up forms of corruption, but corruption will continue under that system.

The mind, and here is where Ramaphosa has the biggest leadership challenge of his tenure as president: if he avoids that split and takes the high road, where he does a deal with a party where they can work out some kind of economic framework that brings growth, it's a no-brainer. You choose the DA. So it's whether it's heart or mind.

I like betting, but this is not one I'd really easily put money on, because with politicians, we think that they're going to take rational decisions. But we know from our experience that they are as prone to emotional incontinence as anyone in the world, and they do really foolish things. This is why it does come back to the ANC. Because of its incumbency, because of its stature within this country, with its history within this country, it is the key player.

WSM [17:13] Far more than, you know, the DA could do a deal with ActionSA. And quite frankly, the ANC might be happy with that, because it might think, well, there's no risk of contagion, then we can go our way and hope to make a comeback. But that's another issue that all of these parties need to take into consideration: contagion.

What has the link-up between the ANC and the DA cost the DA in terms of core voters? It doesn't seem to be very much. It may well be, though, that the link-up between the DA and the ANC has cost the ANC voters. There's a very strong antipathy to tying up with what is a largely white party. And tying up with ActionSA: how does the ANC do a deal with a party which is militantly anti-immigrant and anti-migration, which is dangerously militant on that issue? It's very difficult. But then how does it do a deal with MK, which is similarly very militantly anti-migration?

Alec Hogg [18:36] There's a lot of drama, and no doubt people have got their views, and the drama will come from that. But if you step away a little, a creative solution could also be there, somewhere, hidden at the moment, rather than the easy solution. Corné Mulder put the easy solution on the table. He said that together with the Freedom Front Plus, obviously, the DA and ActionSA, we can run all three Gauteng metros, get rid of the ANC once and for all, and have two and a half years to prove that good governance does translate into economic benefits. So that's his shtick, if you like. But somewhere along the line, in all of these posturings that we're seeing, is there any creative...

WSM [19:25] Hmm.

Alec Hogg [19:34] ...conclusion or suggestion that's come through your subconscious?

WSM [19:41] I think the one thing we must keep in mind is the personalities of the players. Geordin Hill-Lewis has been untested in this kind of situation, so we'll see. We don't yet know what drives him and how he'll play it. But we do know Ramaphosa. The kind of solution that Ramaphosa pulled off with the GNU is an interesting one, which was a very big coalition. He could just have done it with the DA, but he softened the ideological blow within his party by pulling in other parties: pulling in Rise Mzansi, he had the Freedom Front, but he also had the PA and various odds and sods. So he might try something like that. That might be one of the ways he gets around the taint factor of doing a deal with the DA.

It's really early days. We've got 13 days to go. The process is really only starting. All I can say is thank God it's only 13 days. It was really important that the thing is crammed into a short period, to get it over and done with, and then we can all move on with our lives.

A deal has to be done. But again, I want to come back to this thing: Ramaphosa has a real chance to act like a statesman. He has postured as a statesman throughout a rather disappointing eight, nine years of presidency, and has delivered very little. He has shirked choices at every possible chance.

This time he cannot shirk the choice. He has to do something. And his political life is essentially over. There's going to be an ANC presidential leadership election next year. They're talking about bringing it forward; no doubt his enemies are talking about bringing it forward because this is the moment to dump him. As Thabo Mbeki has said, he needs to take responsibility for what's happened. He also now has a final chance at taking responsibility for what could unfold over the next ten years.

WSM [21:49] South Africa could be transformed if we had local governments that were actually working for the benefit of the people. If a tiny little place like uMngeni can do it with the most limited of resources, how much more so in the heartlands of our wealthy Gauteng and our relatively wealthy cities, with the financial, intellectual and organisational support of a whole country? How much more could be done? So it's really a big, big choice for old Ramaphosa.

Alec Hogg [22:40] 2029: what happens next will presumably influence that big election, the next national election.

WSM [22:50] Yes, and for the DA that should be featuring very high in their minds. It may very well be better for them not to participate in poisonous alliances that are going to be ruinously incompetent and fragile, and just sit it out and wait for 2029. Because if those fragile alliances happen again, the ruin will continue, and the DA has benefited, in a sense, from the ruin. It's been very clear that people are breaking the ideological shackles and voting according to the way they are experiencing life, the privations that they're experiencing.

So the DA might really think very carefully: don't go into really bad coalitions in order to have power. It's a difficult thing to ask any politician to do, because of course the whole basis is "if I were in power, I could do so much better". In these circumstances, depending who you have your coalition with, that is likely not to be true. It's likely to be the opposite. If you're in the wrong coalition, the taint that you're left with at the end of the collapse process will have a very big effect in 2029.

Alec Hogg [24:23] Is this result opening space for a new political movement? I ask this because Prince Mashele has been banging this drum now for over a year. He is going to be announcing his new political movement in March next year. He says that he has a lot of support. And certainly whenever he talks on BizNews, he gets a huge number of people who are interested in what he has to say. And from the whispers behind the scenes, he seems to have, on all parts of the racial spectrum, some very interesting people behind him. Do you think these elections open that door still wider, or has ActionSA's performance, particularly in the urban areas, closed it now and made it the more likely successor to the ANC in those areas?

WSM [25:22] I think Prince is engaging, and I think he would be an asset to any party. But I just don't see where his root support sits: where it sits geographically, where it sits on the ideological spectrum. It's very difficult to start a national political movement that has traction. It's a long, long, slow process.

Look at the SACP's performance. It stood, well, not for the first time; it also contested one council in 2016. But it stood for the first time nationally and got 2.3% of the vote. Now that's a constituency, but it's not really a constituency that you can turn into a major political force. And take the benefit the ANC has of decades, a century, of involvement in the nitty-gritty of South African politics.

There are so many flash-in-the-pan parties already in South Africa that are built around personalities, that are vanity vehicles, and have no deep ideological or organisational or geographical basis on which to grow. I'd be very surprised if his is any different. I'd be absolutely delighted, because he makes sense in some ways. But why doesn't he just join an existing political movement and play it from there?

Gayton McKenzie is a case in point, Mmusi Maimane, Songezo Zibi from Rise Mzansi. They flash across the political pan like it's marble season, it's yo-yo season, it's spinning-top season, and they come and go, and they really have no deep traction, because it takes a long time to build a political movement.

Alec Hogg [27:35] Hmm. Just to clarify that, Prince said in the last conversation we had that he will definitely not be the leader of this movement, but they do have a leader who is a black person. He emphasised that: someone highly, highly credible. That was his point. But let's see when that comes through.

Just to close off with: you mentioned Gayton McKenzie. We had some shock news yesterday that South Africa's most medalled athlete from the Olympics, Tatjana Smith, is now going to swim for the Netherlands, no longer represent her country. And she said the reason for this is that it's now impossible for her to continue working with Swimming South Africa; cadre deployment has hollowed it out and made it impossible. This is under Gayton McKenzie's watch. It doesn't reflect well on him.

WSM [28:06] Mm.

Alec Hogg [28:35] I would ask whether that might have a further negative impact on the Patriotic Alliance, which really didn't have, by all accounts, a good election, although you might have a different view of that.

WSM [28:49] I think it had a terrible election. I think Gayton McKenzie is an entertainment act, not a political party. It has a ready market. It has the coloured constituency which it could access, and you would expect it, and he certainly expected it, to do very well there, and yet it didn't. So I think voters are not as foolish as they are often imagined to be. I think voters have the measure of Gayton McKenzie's PA. It's another vehicle for personal aggrandisement, for some questionable deals, and for supping at the gravy train.

The way he has run his portfolio is appalling. In any normal democratic government, he would have been fired ages ago. But of course, in Ramaphosa's incredibly bloated cabinet, you probably have to die in order to be excluded from the cabinet room. So yes, I think he's been a shockingly bad minister.

Alec Hogg [30:09] And William, is there a case, given that we have a completely different political weighting today to what we had in 2024, that the other parties will gang up on the ANC and call for an early election? Something, again, that Corné Mulder said they can do from May next year, which will be three years after the 2024 vote.

WSM [30:36] Yes, it's constitutionally possible, but I just cannot see it happening. This is really on the outer fringes of likelihood. We're heading towards a period of such change anyway. Overturn the whole thing now, have an election now: it might make things worse for the ANC, but on the other hand, at the rate things are happening now, they are going to be a hell of a lot worse for the ANC in 2029 anyway.

So maybe there is a case, but I think getting the votes to do that seems very unlikely. How would the DA vote in such a split? It's part of a GNU with the ANC. It has previously said it would not vote to get rid of Ramaphosa. It would not back any attempt to impeach him, unless the whole impeachment process shows that he's deserving of impeachment. So I cannot see the DA backing a complete vote of no confidence in government in order to bring forward the election by two years. It seems very unlikely to me.

Alec Hogg [32:01] William Saunderson-Meyer is the author of the longest-running political column in the country, and it's to be found right now on BizNews. I'm Alec Hogg with your BizNews Edge.

WSM: the ANC's slide and the deals that come next