In a historic setback, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, which has dominated the country’s politics for three decades, lost its parliamentary majority in the National Assembly election held on 29 May. This means the ANC, which has ruled the country since the end of apartheid in 1994, will need the help of another party to form a coalition government.
The decline in ANC’s fortunes, anticipated by analysts, has been building up politically for over a decade. And it somewhat mirrors the decline of India’s grand old party, the Congress, which, like the ANC’s struggle against apartheid, was the key figure in India’s own freedom movement. ANC’s political trajectory in South Africa aligns with INC’s in India. Around eight years ago, a political analyst in Pretoria said the INC went from leading the independence movement and dominating the political scene to becoming less relevant as factions broke off to pursue their own political agendas. He predicted that the ANC would follow a similar path. With Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) contesting against their parent party in the 2024 election, we can see a reflection of Indian politics playing out in South Africa.
Voting in 2024 elections was held to elect a new 400-member National Assembly in the country’s nine provinces. Seats are allocated proportionally to each party based on the percentage of votes they receive—meaning ANC’s 40 percent votes gets it 40 percent of the seats.
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ANC electoral slide
With over 99.9 percent of votes counted, the ANC has its weakest showing in post-apartheid South African national elections. It has been able to manage just over 40 percent votes. The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, received close to 22 percent votes, the MK came third with close to 15 percent, and the EFF received over 9.5 percent votes.
The ANC, which spearheaded South Africa’s struggle against the brutal and racist system of apartheid, has been in majority in both houses of Parliament in every election since 1994. Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC who spent 27 years in prison, was elected the first black President of South Africa on 27 April 1994 in the country’s first democratic election with universal adult suffrage. ANC leaders and cadres made enormous sacrifices during the prolonged struggle. It was, thus, natural that the ANC remained the dominant political force in post-apartheid South Africa.
The ANC received 62.5 percent votes in 1994, 66.4 percent in 1999, 69.6 percent in 2004, 65.9 percent in 2009, 62.1 percent in 2014, and 57.5 percent in 2019. The days of ANC’s absolute dominance seem to be behind it now, as the party prepares for challenging times ahead.
The first major fault line came in 2013, when the young and charismatic leader Julius Malema, expelled from the party a year before, formed the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), representing a radical leftist and black nationalist agenda. The EFF has managed to slice the ANC vote share, winning around 11 percent votes in the 2019 election and over 9.5 per cent this time around.
During my stay in South Africa, I witnessed the EFF leading a vocal campaign against corruption under then-President Jacob Zuma. “Zupta must go” was the slogan of their campaign, drawing a link between Zuma and the infamous Gupta brothers, an Indian-origin business family that is said to have benefited under Zuma’s rule. The campaign did not point fingers at the wider Indian community but did put people in a difficult spot as I discovered myself. While waiting to cross the street at a traffic light in Cape Town one night, a group of EFF workers passed me by, wearing their distinct red uniforms. Seeing me, an unmistakably Indian woman in a saree, they started shouting, “Zupta must go”, without any provocation.
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ANC’s missteps
The 2021 municipal elections in South Africa gave an indication of the trouble ahead for the ANC. It received less than 50 percent of the vote across the country for the first time in any election since the end of apartheid and lost support in key urban areas of Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban, which had earlier been its strongholds. The Democratic Alliance, a party of predominantly white members, managed to take control of Johannesburg through a majority coalition for the first time.
Earlier, the ANC had expelled Malema in 2012, who formed EFF and relentlessly campaigned to expose inequality in South Africa and the failure of the ANC to sufficiently redistribute land from the white minority to the black majority, apart from corruption and poor governance under Zuma. The biggest setback for the ANC, however, was the departure of Jacob Zuma from the party in December 2023. He accused the incumbent President of having become a proxy for white capitalists and formed his own party, MK. His criminal conviction ruled him out of the contest, although he was allowed to campaign for MK and his name was retained on the ballot as party leader.
The Democratic Alliance has been trying for years to shed its image of a ‘whites only’ party or a party that represents the interests of the white minority. In the run-up to the 2024 elections, it warned of a “doomsday coalition” of the ANC, EFF, and MK, calling it a “clear and present danger”. DA leader John Steenhuisen said South Africa would descend into chaos like Venezuela and Zimbabwe. He called for like-minded parties to come together to prevent the “doomsday coalition”. In August 2023, the DA signed a multi-party charter with six other smaller parties. Reminiscent of the Indian elections, they fought the 2024 election on a ‘Rescue SA’ campaign.
Parallels with India
India and South Africa share a unique, deep connection. South Africa was, in a way, the Karma Bhoomi of MK Gandhi. A young lawyer went to South Africa and returned to India as a political leader, having developed and refined his chosen path of nonviolent resistance, or Satyagraha, in his struggles against racism in South Africa.
There are Gandhi statues in several places in South Africa, but unlike in India, most show him dressed in a suit rather than the iconic loincloth with a walking stick look.
Once, a young miscreant mistook a Gandhi statue in Johannesburg for a white man and threw white paint on it. When I spoke to the Premier of Gauteng province David Makhura, he reassured me the ANC had installed that statue, not India, and his government promptly restored it.
The ANC and its members have close ties with India, which was a leading supporter of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. Indian-origin South Africans, many descended from indentured labourers, joined their black compatriots in fighting apartheid. Many of them were imprisoned like Nelson Mandela.
Modern-day economic ties have developed between the two nations through trade and investment. Several Indian companies and banks have operations in South Africa, and several South African companies also have a presence in India. In the international arena, the two countries are partners in BRICS, IBSA, the G20, and other multilateral forums.
South African polity is now in unfamiliar territory. The dominant political party would have to make a coalition to have over 50 percent of seats in Parliament, unless it decides to rule as a minority government with outside support of one of the other parties. Will it be the doomsday scenario that the DA warned against? Or could it enter into an alliance with the ANC and the DA, which was unthinkable just a few years ago? If it does, would the ANC cadres and voters not see such an alliance as betrayal? President Cyril Ramaphosa is unlikely to be comfortable with the EFF’s radical agenda. And allying with Zuma’s MK would mean going slow on his corruption cases, which would be an equally difficult compromise. Any coalition would involve hard negotiations and will likely alienate ANC voters over time, further eroding their base.
The author is the former High Commissioner of India to South Africa (2013-2017). She tweets @RuchiGhanashyam. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)