It is a sign of our difficult times that no political party has been able to dominate this electoral campaign with any one issue. Instead of parties arguing against each other about one or two issues, they have been talking about different issues to different people. This is a result of several dynamics which show how our society is changing.

First, some of the narrative is now pushed through social media, while even the formal media has splintered into many more channels than existed just five years ago. As each brings its own flavour to the discussions, the national narrative has split even further.

Second, it’s impossible to assess the campaigning on social media.

As campaigning using WhatsApp is encrypted, it is difficult to gauge what parties are doing on that platform.

But this is not just about the media, it is also about our society.

In the past, a small group of elites determined what political topics were uppermost in the South African dialogue. To a large extent, those elites were in the ANC and the DA.

Now, those two parties no longer shape the national discourse.

Even the DA’s flag-burning advert, a clear attempt to provoke an argument if ever there was one, did not dominate the agenda for more than a few days.

People living in the suburbs who rely on English-language formal media may well believe the EFF is losing ground. Those living in townships, consuming podcasts and social media in many other languages could have a completely different perception.

Our political discussions have become more diffuse and complicated without many people realising it, and while some people believe very little will change in next week’s election, others anticipate dramatic change.

As a result, this election is more difficult to predict than past polls and it is impossible to assess “sentiment”.

Of course, polling can mitigate this — if it’s accurate.

A strong pull

Observers of this election have noted certain elements which reveal how powerful our political gravity is. 

Just two years ago, ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba often kick-started issues that would dominate talk radio for an entire day. He did this by calling in to stations in Gauteng.

But in this electoral campaign, ActionSA has not made much of a splash in the media.

While two newer entrants, Rise Mzansi and Build One South Africa, attracted acres of media coverage at the start of the year, they too have failed to make much media headway in the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, the ANC, at least according to polling, has increased its share of the vote fairly significantly, while the DA appears to have lost some momentum.

This shows that the ANC benefits from the pull of political gravity in our society.

There are several factors behind this.

First, and perhaps most important, is demographics.

As the last census noted, “There has been a steady decline in the white proportion of the population, from 11% in 1996 to 7.3% in 2022.”

More people are moving to Cape Town than Johannesburg, with many of the new Capetonians coming from the Eastern Cape. 

While this process is difficult to assess accurately, it could limit the DA in the Western Cape, simply because most arrivals are not the suburban migrants from Gauteng that so many speak about.

As race is still an important factor in voter choices (but is declining in importance over time), this may well matter to the DA.

The power of incumbency

Another important part of this gravity is the power of incumbency, especially for the ANC.

There is some evidence it has used its power in government to benefit it electorally. 

The Sunday Times reports of a recorded meeting in which ANC officials talk about government campaigns during the campaigning period suggest the timing of these campaigns has been politically deliberate.

This week’s Scorpio exclusive by Pieter-Louis Myburgh goes much further, suggesting the party has benefited financially for many years from the power to assign tenders.

Party to the Plunder? Tshwane bus project, Prasa trains deal behind R10m ANC donation

The Economist recently tied together several elements of stories showing how money flowed from a Russian-owned manganese mine in the Northern Cape to the ANC.

And of course, the ANC surely benefited from the Hitachi deal with Chancellor House that saw Eskom receiving badly designed boilers at power stations.

Meanwhile, load shedding has disappeared off the political radar — it has been two months since Eskom last implemented rolling blackouts.

Considering the sheer power of load shedding as a political issue, the timing of this is certainly curious.

Another important factor in our political gravity is the simple history of a political party: the older it is, the better its chances of surviving. If it survived the last elections, it may survive this one, and if it survived the 2014 elections, it will probably still be here late next week.

This explains why the ACDP and the PAC are likely to survive these polls, but Ace Magashule’s ACM probably won’t (there are exceptions to this rule: Cope will probably also disappear after this poll).

There is one other rule of gravity, which is that to have any prospect of growing over the longer term, a party has to hold internal elections at which the leadership can change.

This is why the ANC and the DA are so much bigger than other parties, and why the EFF appears to be running low on steam in this election (that could still change).

Of course, MK appears to defy the laws of political gravity. But that is only because it is still early days and it has a former president from SA’s oldest political party. It seems impossible to believe that MK will contest the next general election in 2029.

While our society is changing, the centre of its political gravity is moving very slowly. Newer entrants will feel every gram of weight as they try to climb the mountain to electoral success. DM

Read more in Daily Maverick: Elections 2024