Tag Archives: african national congress

Evidence shows that racial isolation drives down ANC support among White South Africans

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This is from an excellent new paper by de Kadt and Sands in Political Behavior:

de kadt and sandsThis study investigates how political behavior is shaped by one central outcome of segregation—racial isolation—in post-apartheid South Africa. We focus on the relationship between sustained white isolation-the probability of a white person encountering a non-white person in their local context (Massey and Denton 1988)-on white racial voting. South African elections have been marked by some degree of racial voting since the advent of democracy in 1994; white South Africans have typically voted for “white” parties such as the Democratic Party, the New National Party, the Freedom Front Plus, and the recently conglomerated Democratic Alliance. Scholars of the region have gone so far as to refer to South African elections as a “racial census” (Mattes 1995; Johnson and Schlemmer 1996; Lodge 1999; Ferree 2006, 2010). Our central contribution to this literature is to show that racial voting among white South Africans tends to increase as a function of local white isolation.
……. White South Africans living among other whites are less likely to vote across racial lines, measured as voting for the majority-black African National Congress. At the ward level, greater white isolation in post-apartheid South Africa, even conditional on ward demographics and economic status, leads to lower aggregate support for the ANC. At the individual level, whites living in areas of high white isolation, where inter-racial mixing is limited, are less likely to vote for the ANC than whites who live in less segregated areas.

You have to visit South Africa to appreciate the level of racial segregation in the “Rainbow Nation.”

I wonder how vote choice among white South Africans will evolve if and when the ANC becomes threatened by parties to its left. Presumably, expressive voting for the DA and other smaller parties would not seem so attractive under such a scenario.

State of Capture: Corruption in Jacob Zuma’s South Africa

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This is from Quartz Africa: 

The 355-page report detailing corruption in South Africa’s ruling party offers one rare uplifting moment. In the report, deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas reveals more details of how he turned down an offer by the powerful Gupta family of 600 million rand (about $44 million) to be the country’s finance minister.

Jonas, in an interview with Thuli Mandonsela, the country’s former anti-corruption chief who spearheaded the report released today, said he had agreed to meet with president Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane Zuma on Oct. 23 last year, a few months before then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene was dismissed, kicking off a hailstorm of corruption allegations against the president.

Jonas met the younger Zuma at the Hyatt Regency hotel in the Johannesburg suburb of Rosebank where Zuma asked if they could move to a more private location for discussions “with a third party.”

Jonas was then taken to the Gupta compound in the suburb of Saxonwold where they were joined by Ajay Gupta, the eldest of the Gupta brothers, who briskly informed the deputy minister that “they had been gathering intelligence on him and those close to him.” Gupta informed Jonas that they were going to make him minister of finance, to which Jonas said that only the president could make that decision.

You can download the full State of Capture report here (pdf).

For more on the history of corruption in South Africa see here.

On Zumaphobia and the policy failures of the ANC

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A lot has been written about Jacob Zuma’s failures as president of South Africa, most recently his odd decision to fire his widely respected finance minister, Nhanhla Nene. Zuma replaced Nene with an unknown ANC MP, David van Rooyen, only to replace van Rooyen with former finance minister Pravin Gordhan after intense pressure from the media and the markets.

Sources indicate that Mr. Nene was fired for holding the line on fiscal discipline.

Much of the analysis so far has focused on President Jacob Zuma — his increasing personalization of power within the ANC, corruption, and even his private life.

But in an interesting piece Andile Mngxitama questions this Zuma-centric narrative, instead focusing attention on wider policy failures within the ANC. Mngxitama argues (correctly, I believe) that:

Both Mbeki and Zuma are ANC cadres through and through and it’s the party policy that determines what they do. Zuma has not strayed from the ANC policies and no one has yet made this claim in any meaningful way. So, if it’s not policy that is the problem, how do we judge Zuma’s performance?

The main problem is that his detractors fundamentally agree with the ANC policies and they have therefore chosen to find fault with Zuma the man and thereby rob us of a useful analysis of why things are falling apart. A shift from Zuma to policy would also show that his presidency is a product of policy; the template for things to fall apart was designed by his predecessors.

Zuma’s sin, which has been missed by the analysts, who are too driven by “Zumaphobia”, is that he has not been able or willing to halt the downward spiral, which is essentially a byproduct of ANC policies. The main policy plank of the ANC since it took over in 1994 has been correctly described as neoliberalism – the privileging of capitalism as the driver of society.

The implications of this policy direction are to increasingly remove the state from society and the economy and allow the profit motive to determine who gets what service. The state privatises assets and those it keeps are similarly managed as if they are capitalist entities.

The piece at times sounds anti-market. But don’t let that distract you from its succinct understanding of the political economy challenges facing South Africa.

In 2008 the ANC recalled then President Thabo Mbeki. There is no reason to believe that President Jacob Zuma has totally eclipsed the party machinery. Indeed this has been made clear by his quick retreat after the brazen attempt to weaken the finance ministry.

Recent events in South Africa suggest that the party of Mandela is no longer(if it ever was) the voice of the people. But this outcome cannot be pinned on Zuma. The party elite, including Zuma, largely remain hostage to the post-apartheid political settlement. Meanwhile, the country’s deplorable economic indicators are adding fuel to the fire that is the Economic Freedom Fighters (which is increasingly sounding more and more mainstream and in tune with the frustrations not just of South Africans, but younger Africans in general north of the Limpopo). On a recent tour of London the EFF leader, Julius Malema, held meetings with CEOs of companies with interests in South Africa — a signal that these companies appreciate the potency of his message of economic freedom.