The ANC Lose their Majority: What Next for South Africa?

this video is brought to you by brilliant on Wednesday some 27 million South Africans went to the polls to elect new provincial legislatures and a new National Parliament polling ahead of the election suggested that thec the African National Congress were on track to lose their parliamentary majority for the first but on the eve of the election ANC politicians were still hopeful of either eeking out a majority or coming close enough to form a coalition with some of the more compliant minor parties however as the results rolled in over the next couple of days it became clear that thec had actually underperformed the polls and will now almost definitely have to form a coalition with one of the three big opposition parties so in this video we're going to take a look at why the anc's popularity is waning the election results themselves and what might happen [Music] next before we start if you haven't already please consider subscribing and ringing the bell to stay in the loop and be notified when we release new videos so let's start with a bit of context we've done a whole load of videos on South Africa's political and economic crises in the past so go and watch those if you want to know more but the TDR is that since the end of aparte in 1994 South Africa has been run by Nelson Mandela's former party the African National Congress whilst thec originally did a pretty good job since at least 2009 when Jacob Zuma came to power things have been going downhill since then wages and GDP per capita have stagnated while national debt unemployment crime and economic inequality all increased sharply now Zuma's Reign was beset by corruption allegations and in 2005 he was indicted on various corruption charges but attempts to prosecute him have been beset by legal challenges and political controversy Zuma was finally jailed for contempt of court in 2021 but he spent just two months in prison before being released on medical grounds the release was later ruled illegal but Zuma never returned to prison supposedly because of overcrowding and quote a surge in gangsterism in 2017 Zuma was replaced by a business tycoon called siril Raposa who narrowly defeated Zuma's ex-wife and political Ally in the leadership ballot there was a lot of Hope when Raposa came to office but his presidency has so far been a disappointment South Africa's economy has remained stagnant poverty is ubiquitous youth employment is running above 50% and Corruption has probably got worse rather than better the latest issue revolves around South Africa's national electricity company escom which in part thanks to rampant corruption just can't Supply the country with anywhere near the electricity it needs and has therefore resorted to Rolling blackouts anyway for all these reasons the anc's popularity has steadily declined over time with their vote share at national elections falling from a high of 70% in 2004 to 58% in 2019 and polling before Wednesday's election suggested that they were on track to lose their majority for the first time time you might expect this trend to benefit the Democratic Alliance South Africa's established opposition party that's economically to the right of thec and generally more popular with white South Africans however most former ANC voters have instead migrated to two relatively new more radical leftist parties Julius mma's eff and Jacob Zuma's MK party who were both polling around 10% for context the eff are a black nationalist Marxist party whose policy platform includes the force repatriation of Farmland from White South Africans nationalizing basically most of the economy and sending arms to both Hamas and Russia Zuma's MK party is basically just an anti-c party that's mainly popular with Zulu nationalists and voters in Zuma's home province of quu natal both malma and Zuma are former ANC politicians who basically criticize the ANC for being too moderate anyway on Wednesday evening the first results started rolling in and by Friday morning things weren't looking good for thec with over 50% of the vote counted at the time of writing thec is on just over 42% of the vote the Democratic Alliance is on 23% Zuma's MK party is on about 11% and the eff is on about 10% South African cists expect the final results to be broadly similar to what we're currently seeing or perhaps even slightly worse for thec now because South Africa uses a broadly proportional system which has recently been amended to accommodate independent candidates Cates this means thec will probably have to form a coalition with one of the three main opposition parties however none of these options are ideal for starters none of the three parties are really incentivized to go into Coalition with thec given how much easier it is to be the anti-c opposition than it is to govern in South Africa on top of that Metro level coalitions between thec and eff in places like Johannesburg have been appallingly incompetent and malma would probably demand that any Manifesto in in some of the eff's more radical policies a grand Coalition with a democratic Alliance would be both more economically Orthodox and far more palatable to International markets which have already reacted uneasily to the results with the Rand dropping by 2% against the dollar John Stan hosen the da leader told the economist in 2021 that he would want to try to cut a deal with moderates in thec to prevent what he described as a doomsday Coalition with the eff but the more radical elements of thec would resist a coalition with what they perceive to be a white party and it would probably only inflame the radical anti-c sentiment that fuels the eff and Zuma's MK party the da also worry that going into Coalition with thec Will mean giving up their relatively easy role as the anc's main critic and unless they can somehow fix one of the world's most broken countries in just a single term they'll end up sharing the blame when things inevitably go wrong so this just leaves su's MK party in a sense this might be the easiest option for thec especially if they decide to get rid of Zuma's arch rival Raposa in the aftermath of these poor results it's pretty clear that Zuma mainly wants a presidential pardon given the enormous backlog of corruption related charges that have built up over the years and perhaps ANC backing for control of his home Province kwazulu natal nonetheless even if there's a deal to be done here it would look appallingly corrupt and once su's got his pardon there's no guarantee he'll cooperate for the remaining 5 years of the parliamentary term all in all whoever thec ends up forming a coalition with it's unlikely to be good news for South Africa in the short term nonetheless perhaps the optimistic take here is that this is the necessary price that South Africa has to pay if it wants to transition away from thec and given the anc's record this may well be a price worth paying we're making videos like this we rely on tons of data analysis to 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Channel: TLDR News Global

Views: 299,171

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Id: ZP5sQBgCt8w

Length: 8min 30sec (510 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 01 2024