Municipal by-elections highlight developing trends

No less than 28 municipal by-elections have taken place in South Africa during the month of May in eight of the country’s nine provinces. It has given a good indication of the lay of the land at this point, a year before next year’s general municipal elections. While the gains made by the Democratic Alliance outside its traditional power base may, not without reason, be portrayed as dramatic, it does not represent the full picture. It is, however, indicative of some clear trends to watch and underlines the importance of local government as a shaper of national politics.

The statistics of last week's 15 by-elections and the 13 earlier in May tell us that the ANC has won 18 or 64% of the wards, but lost three to the Democratic Alliance (two in the Western Cape and one in the Free State) and one to an independent candidate (in Limpopo) in the process. It further gained one ward from the Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal.

It also represents an overall loss of 10.7% in terms of the total number of contested wards.

Including its three gains, the DA won five wards, representing almost 18% of the contested wards. It does, however, represent a 10.7% growth among the wards contested.

The IFP won three wards and lost one – all in KwaZulu-Natal – representing a 25% loss in terms of its position as it was before the by-elections.

If one adds to this the continuing, often violent, service delivery protests in most parts of the country, the message to the governing ANC is probably even more serious than the formal statistics of the by-elections would suggest.

The May 2010 municipal by-elections round off a year that has seen the DA gaining six seats from the ANC in the Western Cape, one in the Eastern Cape, one in the Free State and one in Gauteng as part of a coalition.

Under a proportional voting system at national level, local government takes a much more important role in the overall political scene as indicator of the land than might have otherwise been the case. The third tier of government has, in most instances, become the only direct exposure the broader voting public has to representatives of political parties.

The experience of voters in most municipalities across the country is clearly starting to hurt the ANC. Judged by the reception that President Jacob Zuma received on his return visit to the Siyathemba settlement at Balfour, and his own expressed shock at conditions he found at Sweetwaters in Johannesburg, the ANC will be hard pressed to turn things around in the remaining 10 months or so before next year's municipal elections.

On that front, the DA has had a lucky escape with the 'open-air' toilets it provided to an informal settlement in Cape Town. Largely, the escape was offered courtesy of the senseless vandalism of the ANC Youth League when enclosures were finally erected, which obscured the real issue – the unenclosed toilets episode should never have occurred in the first place.

The relatively high average voter turnout of more than 40% - as high as 52.3% in some instances – is also indicative of a fairly high political temperature among communities. Generally, municipal by-elections tend to deliver low voter turnout.

The good news in a broader perspective is that apparently, the South African public has not yet lost faith in the democratic process. There is a huge responsibility on the shoulders of those who now gained in these elections not to disappoint those voters.

If the DA wants to build on the momentum that this round of by-elections has given it, it will have to be vigilant where it controls local governments. It can expect to come under increased scrutiny and pressure in the build-up to next year’s election.

Much will also depend on the extent to which the DA succeeds in putting the organisation on the ground across the country at grassroots level to tap into the potential seemingly illustrated by the by-elections.

A good start would be to use the data it should have collected during the by-elections on those who voted for the DA, to not only render TLC to those supporters but also to harness as many of them as possible in party structures.

The by-elections also seem to have confirmed the trend of the demise of the IFP, which remains largely a KZN provincial organisation.

One other very important piece of good news, from particularly last week’s by-elections, is the indication from the DA’s gains that South Africa is slowly starting to emerge from purely race-dominated politics.

But one bloom - the DA taking a ward in Cape Town in which not a single white vote was cast - does not make a summer – but at least a start seems to have been made toward issue and merit-driven politics.