In little over a year, the ANC is likely to lose the national elections. This is now accepted wisdom supported by all the best available polling. Some have suggested the ANC is also likely to lose KwaZulu-Natal. This would be an extraordinary change for a province that, not long ago, was seen as the ANC’s strongest base.
In fact, one analyst argued that during the Zuma period the country was run from Durban rather than Parliament in Cape Town, the seat of government in Pretoria or the financial capital of Johannesburg.
But Durban and much of KwaZulu-Natal have been hit really hard by the failure of 2022’s tourist season, the recent floods, the riots in July 2021 and the incredibly brazen criminality that is now very common in and adjacent to the ANC.
Durban is the original home of the izikabi, the professional assassins who moved from the taxi mafias into the political mafias, and also of the “business forums” that openly shake down legitimate business.
Many of KwaZulu-Natal’s residents are exhausted, scared and desperate to finally be rid of the ANC. Of course, we must be mindful of the fact that the deepest loathing is for members of the so-called RET faction of the ANC, who are simply known as amasela (thieves) these days.
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At the recent elective conference more than 60% of KZN delegates supported Zweli Mkhize, who as well as being personally compromised had also put up his hand to lead the amasela. But all the din of all the RET noise has drowned out the fact that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s support in the KwaZulu-Natal ANC remains significant.
Now that it is clear that the RET faction is a sinking ship, it is possible that the Ramaphosa-aligned faction in the KwaZulu-Natal ANC may make a bid for more power in the hope that it could hold the province for the party.
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The EFF made a big impression on university campuses in KwaZulu-Natal but has been unable to build any meaningful popular support. It is not present in community struggles and most older voters find its leaders to be ill-mannered young men who are not credible candidates for leadership.
The DA in the province is suffering from the party’s national fallings-out with black leaders as well as Helen Zille’s collapse into alt-right paranoia.
The Patriotic Alliance, a collection of xenophobes and opportunists, is making a bid for attention in Wentworth and other areas, but it will never be a real player in the city.
Durban is home to Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa’s largest social movement. But it has thus far not run its own candidates or actively joined any political party, so it is unlikely to have any real power to shape the coming election. Unless the unions, inside and outside trade federation Cosatu, move fast to build some sort of electoral project, they will probably also be largely irrelevant when the elections come around.
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The one organisation that already has an electoral machinery and has been on the up since 2019 is the IFP. It is making rapid advances in by-elections. In the 2021 local elections, of the 18 municipalities that the ANC lost, 17 were to the IFP or IFP-led coalitions. It will be a serious threat to the ANC in 2024.
So, it seems the IFP has returned as a major player in KwaZulu-Natal, either on its own or with the DA as a partner. However the chips fall in the end, one thing is for sure: although Durban has popular leftwing organisation on a scale of no other city in the country, there is no left-wing party operating in Durban or in wider KwaZulu-Natal and it is the right that is set to benefit from the collapse of the credibility of the ANC.
As events are held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Durban strikes of 1973, which gave birth to the powerful trade union movement of the 1980s and the bottom-up democratic politics that shaped the United Democratic Front, the left is simply absent from electoral politics as the power of the right grows. DM168
Dr Imraan Buccus is senior research associate at the Auwal Socio-Economic Research Institute.
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.
“Helen Zille’s collapse into alt-right paranoia” This is some sort of made-up journalistic yabber with no actual meaning whatsoever.
My forecast is that the DA and the IFP will cooperate and remove the ANC from KZN.
Lol! Imraan couldn’t diss all the other parties without having a dig at the DA. And Zille is the head that’s always watching the enemy over the trench wall and so becomes an easy target for journalists. Her skin is tougher than Imraan’s pencil.
The ANC have demonstrated conclusively that the party is incapable of governing a unitary South Africa. ( who is surprised ?)
Inevitably regions will move to some form of self -reliance or semi-autonomy. Once the ANC implodes, as it almost surely will the impetus will be greater. The irony will be that ANC rule will send South Africa back to looking a bit like it did before 1910.
( The joker in the pack , however, is the spectre of large-scale unrest and violence , in which case everyone will suffer. )
“Helen Zille’s collapse into alt-right paranoia”. If that is code for ” does not agree with my opinions”, it may be right, otherwise it’s just lazy thinking. Please elaborate or leave the cheap simplistic and incorrect tropes out of your articles.
Ja, is a cheap shot, and undermines his article. But the DA certainly do have a problem if they continue to think that black South Africa will be ok with a white leader. I’m all for a meritocracy, but that is a bridge too far.
No arguments there, but to call Zille right wing or alt right is just plain wrong. In a coalition though I believe the DA has alot to bring to the table.