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South Africa

DA impresses with wins in South African municipal elections

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Mmusi Maimane, the new leder of the opposition Democratic Alliance, hopes the promising 2016 municipal elections are a harbinger of greater success in 2019. (Facebook)
Mmusi Maimane, the new leder of the opposition Democratic Alliance, hopes the promising 2016 municipal elections are a harbinger of greater success in 2019. (Facebook)

The problem with South Africa’s opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has always been that it is viewed as a party for wealthy whites — even when its former leader, Helen Zille, was a longtime anti-apartheid journalist. south africa flag

The rap on the DA’s new leader, Mmusi Maimane, is that the 36-year-old was far too inexperienced to navigate the South Africa’s complicated racial politics, long dominated in the post-apartheid era by the African National Congress (ANC). Even under Maimane’s leadership, ANC leaders and others routinely slam the Democratic Alliance, somewhat unfairly, for a ‘legacy of racism.’

But the DA’s success in last week’s municipal elections may force South Africans to reconsider their views both about the party and its young leader. Voters across the country recoiled at the economic malaise, corruption and other shenanigans that have accumulated under Jacob Zuma, the country’s president since 2009, handing several victories to the DA, which fell just shy of winning in Johannesburg, South Africa’s most populous city.

In the May 2014 general election, the Democratic Alliance had its best showing to date, even though it meant winning just 22.23% of the vote nationwide, compared to 62.15% for the ruling ANC. Historically, the DA has managed to attract a wide majority in Western Cape province and in the city of Cape Town, but it has struggled elsewhere in an uphill battle to convince voters to abandon the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela that’s still synonymous with the end of apartheid.

More than two decades after the ANC came to power, however, unemployment is on the rise, GDP growth has slowed, and Zuma faced a rebuke earlier this spring from South Africa’s top constitutional court, which ordered him to repay some of the $23 million in public funds that Zuma spent to renovate his Nkandla home. One of the much-hyped BRICS economies, South Africa hasn’t achieved GDP growth over 4% since 2007, and growth slowed increasingly in the past three years — the economy is expected to grow by just 0.1% this year.

Election officials confirmed late last week that the Democratic Alliance won in Nelson Mandela Bay, a municipality that includes Port Elizabeth, the largest city of Eastern Cape province.

nelson mandela bay 16

Over the weekend came even more stunning news that the Democratic Alliance narrowly edged out the ANC in Tshwane municipality (which includes Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative and executive capital) and only narrowly lost Johannesburg. Both cities are in Gauteng province, which has been a Maimane target for a while, dating back to his own mayoral run in Johannesburg in 2011.

tshwane16Voters across the country voted on August 3 for municipal councils at several levels of government. The largest prizes include the councils of eight metropolitan municipalities, which include South Africa’s most populous cities.

In addition to Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg, those eight municipalities also include the DA-controlled Cape Town and four additional councils that the ANC easily retained (including, for example, the eThekwini municipality that includes Durban).
johannesburg 2016The results mean that the DA (in Pretoria and Port Elizabeth) and the ANC (in Johannesburg) will both scramble either to align with the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or to try to govern with a minority.
Continue reading DA impresses with wins in South African municipal elections →

South Africa

Maimane, sudden favorite to lead the DA, faces uphill battle

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maimaneattacksPhoto credit to Lulama Zenzile / Foto24.

With four years to go in her second term as premier of Western Cape province, Helen Zille announced Monday that she would not go forward as the leader of South Africa’s opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA).  south africa flag

That opens the way for the DA’s parliamentary leader, Mmusi Maimane, to win the leadership in three weeks’ time at the party congress. If he wins, as is very likely, it will be the first time that a black South African will lead the country’s chief opposition party. It comes at a time when both Maimane and Julius Malema, the leader of the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), are making headlines by challenging president Jacob Zuma, whose ruling African National Congress (ANC) has dominated South African politics and governance since the end of apartheid in 1994.

At age 34, Maimane is part of the generation a bit too young to join the resistance struggle against apartheid. Nevertheless, he has consistently outperformed his party as a member of the South African National Assembly from Gauteng — the largest of South Africa’s provinces, and home to both Johannesburg, the country’s largest city, and Pretoria, its capital. In the 2014 election, Maimane won 30.8% of the vote in Gauteng to just 53.6% for the ANC, and also he performed strongly in the 2011 Johannesburg mayoral election. Strong performances alone, however, that boost the DA’s support to the 30% threshold, will not create a true two-party system in South Africa.

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RELATED: Who is Mmusi Maimane?
Possibly the next premier of Gauteng.

RELATED: Even with victory assured, is the ANC’s future at risk?

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In contrast to ANC propaganda that sharply denounces the Democratic Alliance as a white-dominated vehicle for post-colonial oppression, Zille was a celebrated journalist who worked to uncover the injustices of minority rule in South Africa during the 1980s and 1990s. In 2004, the Democratic Alliance won just 12.4% of the popular vote. After Zille took control of the leadership, the party won control of Western Cape province and increased the DA’s national share of the vote to 22.2% in the May 2014 general election. Nevertheless, when the ANC, under Zuma’s weak leadership, can still command over 62% of the vote, it’s clear that there’s a ceiling to the support that a party led by a white South African will command in a country where the racial nature of politics runs deep.

That doesn’t mean that Maimane’s probable ascension as the party’s next leader will solve the party’s image problem, and Maimane might be well-advised to rename and rebrand the party as his first priority if elected as its next leader. Even under the best conditions possible for the Democratic Alliance, it’s inconceivable to believe that the ANC will be dislodged in the next election in 2019 or even perhaps the 2024 election. But Maimane, whose father grew up in the notorious Soweto slum, can present a fresh contrast to an increasingly geriatric ruling class. Zuma will be 77 when his second term ends. His most likely successor, vice president Cyril Ramaphosa, is currently 62 years old, and he first seriously contested the ANC’s leadership in the late 1990s, when Thabo Mbeki edged him out for the opportunity to succeed Nelson Mandela.  Continue reading Maimane, sudden favorite to lead the DA, faces uphill battle →