When the results of the August 2016 local elections were announced, ANC NEC member Fikile Mbalula grabbed his phone and sent out an angry tweet. In the flavoursome, hyperbolic and combative language he is fond of employing, Mbalula wrote: “The white racist political party DA must not say easy victory the majority of our pple did not turn up. Simple cheque the stats you will see.” (sic)
Mbalula was wrong and right. Voters had actually turned up in huge numbers for the 2016 elections compared with previous local elections. More than a million and a half more voters went to the polls in August 2016 for the local elections than those that did in 2011. A total of 15,296,746 South Africans voted that week, an increase of 1,631,832 compared with the 2011 election.
In 2018 about 35.9-million South Africans were eligible to vote. Of that number 26.7-million actually went out and registered to vote. On the day of the vote only 17.6-million actually cast their votes.
The turnout showed a growing enthusiasm for local elections among SA voters, a trend that is not that common elsewhere in the world. Turnout in the 2000 local elections, for example, was a mere 48.07%. It stayed the same in 2006 and then jumped up to 57% in 2011 and 58% in 2016.
So if you compare local elections, people turned up for the 2016 elections — only they didn’t vote for the ANC. They went with the opposition parties. It was a trend that started in 2011 when the ANC lost voters in every province, with the exception of KwaZulu-Natal, where it cannibalised the IFP.
Mbalula’s argument that the ANC’s “people” didn’t turn out in numbers shows us just how much trouble his party is in. The ANC’s major voter base in Gauteng townships stayed home, while those who were gatvol, particularly in the suburbs, were getting up in the morning, going out to queue and voting for the opposition.
In essence, Mbalula’s tweet was acknowledging that the ANC no longer excited its core base, particularly the township component of it.
This is a crucial trend for the opposition to note. The Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO) noted after the 2016 elections that “areas that largely voted ANC had dramatically lower turnout rates than areas that tended to vote DA”.
It went on to compare turnout in Soweto and the “northern suburbs” of Johannesburg: “Of the 119 voting districts where the turnout was less than 40%, the ANC got on average 57% of the vote and the DA 15%. By contrast, of the 401 voting districts where the turnout was over 70%, the DA got on average of 69% of the vote and the ANC just 20% ...
“The ANC’s inability to get its core voter base out to the polls in its historical areas of strength was a more substantial reason for its losses than a large shift of support among its traditional voters to the DA or EFF.”
Thus the opposition, too, failed in 2016. They could not articulate a vision to “turn” those key township voters who were gatvol with the ANC into active support for the opposition. Those voters just stayed at home.
The rise of Cyril Ramaphosa to the ANC presidency helped the party avoid disaster in the May 2019 election. Yet even then, the ANC was helped by the fact that most South Africans who were eligible to vote stayed home instead of going to the polls. What if more South Africans who had had enough of state capture, corruption, poor economic growth and poverty had turned out to vote for someone else? Would the ANC have won the 57.5% it enjoyed if that had happened? No.
In 2018 about 35.9-million South Africans were eligible to vote. Of that number 26.7-million actually went out and registered to vote. On the day of the vote only 17.6-million actually cast their votes. Half the voting population did not make their voices heard.
Those were votes lost not just to the ANC, but to the opposition as well. It is worth reflecting on the fact that 9.8-million eligible voters did not even register. An astonishing 6-million of those were under 30. The people whose future we are talking about did not feel a need to even put their names down to participate.
The secret to winning the 2021 local elections — at least for the opposition — is getting the gatvol voters out of their homes and to the voting stations. There was a time when the ANC was a winner in getting its supporters to the polls — it laid on busses, minibus taxis and members’ cars to do the job. Those were the days when it had money. It is broke now. It can no longer rely on past benefactors to pay humongous amounts of cash for transport for voters to get to the polls.
The opposition has a chance to consolidate its successes of 2016.
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