By Joe Bavier
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – On paper, this week’s elections in South Africa should provide a golden opportunity for the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and its leader Johannes Steenhuisen.
The African National Congress (ANC) – Nelson Mandela’s party that has been in power for the past thirty years – has little to brag about. The economy has barely grown in the past ten years. The unemployment rate is among the highest in the world. The infrastructure is crumbling.
The DA, the country’s second largest party, can point to an objectively better track record in the Western Cape, its stronghold and the only province not controlled by the ANC.
But if pre-election polls are accurate, support has barely budged since the country won around a fifth of the vote in the last general election in 2019.
However, despite campaign missteps and the DA’s attempts to broaden its support, Steenhuisen could find himself in a crucial position after the May 29 elections, in which the ANC is expected to lose its parliamentary majority for the first time.
Although there has been an improvement recently, some opinion polls put ANC support at just 40%, an embarrassing blow if that happens and which would make a coalition with small parties difficult.
And while Steenhuisen, 48, has vowed that the ANC must go, he has not ruled out a post-electoral deal if it keeps former president Jacob Zuma’s Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) out of government . The EFF promises to nationalize industries and confiscate white-owned land.
“I don’t rule anything out, depending on the future election results,” he said in an interview with Reuters in March.
NO VOTES FOR WHITE PRIVILEGE
The pro-business DA has long struggled to shed its image as the party of South Africa’s privileged white minority and appeal to black voters, a matter not helped by a succession of defections by black DA legislators.
Steenhuisen, 48, who is white, became leader in 2019 after his black predecessor Mmusi Maimane resigned, accusing some within the party of undermining his efforts to woo black voters.
Steenhuisen, who hails from South Africa’s eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, has been immersed in the DA for his entire adult life, starting as an activist before his election as a DA city councilor in Durban at just 22 years old.
He told Reuters that the DA was the party of all South Africans.
“I don’t want people to vote for the district attorney if they think we’re here to protect and entrench white privilege,” he said. “Our policies are the best mechanism to free people from a life of abject poverty amid failing services.”
A March opinion survey by the Brenthurst Foundation and the SABI Strategy Group shows that many South Africans have confidence in the DA’s ability to govern.
The DA-run Western Cape and the capital Cape Town were by far considered the best-governed province and major city. And 37% of respondents had a positive image of the party.
However, Steenhuisen’s own favorable position lags far behind at 19%.
“Part of the reason the DA is not doing better is because there are questions about the leadership,” said Melanie Verwoerd, an independent South African analyst. “It’s as much in the tone as it is in the content.”
Under Steenhuisen, the DA has doubled down on economically liberal policies that could struggle to gain traction among poor black South Africans.
And the decidedly negative campaign he is leading has been dogged by a string of own goals.
For example, a recent DA advertisement depicted a burning South African flag. The statue was supposed to symbolize the risks if the ANC entered into a coalition with left-wing parties, but it immediately provoked a reaction.
Opponents struck. President Cyril Ramaphosa called the ad “treacherous”. The national broadcaster SABC refused to broadcast the broadcast.
So when it should have been focused on rallying support at the last minute, the officer found himself defending himself.
Yet it is on course to maintain its position among South Africa’s major parties, with Steenhuisen holding firm as a political force bent on fending off an ANC tie-up with the EFF or MK in what he calls “a doomsday coalition” ‘ mentions.
“We will do everything we can to prevent that,” he said.
(Reporting by Joe Bavier; additional reporting by Tim Cocks and Nellie Peyton, editing by William Maclean)
