Responding to the ANC’s January 8 anniversary statement, DA leader Mmusi Maimane said that, come the 2019 national and provincial elections, "we [the DA] aim to occupy the Union Buildings".
For a party with 22.3% of the national vote, that represents a remarkably ambitious sentiment — but one the DA is investing heavily in nonetheless.
After a meeting of the DA’s federal executive in October, Maimane unveiled a roadmap to 2019 designed, he said, "to achieve our goal of being part of a national government in 2019".
One can trace that ambition back further still. In June 2015, at the launch of the DA’s 2029 vision document, which described what SA would look like after 10 years of a DA national government, Gauteng party leader John Moodey described the strategy as "a statement of intent".
In the 2014 national and provincial elections, the ANC secured 11.4m votes and the DA 4.1m. To win — or at least be part of a national coalition government — the DA is proposing it will roughly double its total number of votes, to about 8m, at the expense of the ANC. Put another way, the DA will have to grow by about 100%.
Of course, one could quibble with that number; it is just an estimate. Perhaps the DA believes it need only grow by 50%, to about 6m votes, to squeeze out a national coalition government with the EFF and other smaller parties.
Whether it is 50% or 100% growth, those are the kinds of numbers politicians fantasise about rather than actually plan for. While many may be tempted to argue that the results of the 2016 local government elections suggest it is a realistic possibility, the numbers say something else.
The ANC’s loss of key metros Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay suggests the DA has real and powerful momentum behind it. In certain constituencies, that is true. But a comparison of the past two rounds of local and national elections shows the ANC’s performance in 2016 is not really the aberration it is perceived to be.
The ANC lost almost the same number of votes between the 2009 national election and the 2011 local elections (3.2m votes) as it did between the 2014 national election and 2016 local elections (3.3m votes). Those votes disappeared because of lower voter turnout in local government elections.
Seen in this light, the ANC’s plunge down to 53% in 2016 was fairly typical. And those ANC voters who vanish for local elections inevitably return to the fold when the national elections roll around.
Between the 2004 national election (when the ANC secured 10.8m votes) and the 2007 local elections (6.4m votes) the party lost even more voters than it did last year — about 4.5m.
Yet in 2009, the number of votes surged to 11.6m in Jacob Zuma’s first election.
In hard political terms, one might put it like this: with Zuma as its presidential candidate, the ANC secured 11.6m votes in 2009 and 11.4m votes in 2014. So, for all the trauma the party has suffered, it has lost just 213,827 votes since 2009.
The same applies when comparing local government election results.
The ANC’s 2016 decline was really only in percentage terms. When it comes to total votes received, the drop is once again almost negligible, down from 8.4m in 2011 to 8.1m in 2016, a loss of just 281,206 votes.
So why did the DA do so well in 2016?
First, it benefited from differential turnout, as it wooed a greater percentage of DA-
registered voters to the polling booths on election day. Second, it ran outstanding registration campaigns, registering more new DA votes than the ANC registered its voters.
These factors gave it a decisive advantage in urban metros, where it excelled. And, by being able to form a government in a number of them, it was saved some serious embarrassment through the political capital those victories brought it in the public eye.
Yet the fact remains that the DA made no fundamental breakthrough into the ANC’s core support base, and those 3.3m ANC voters who didn’t turn up in 2016 didn’t vote DA — they just didn’t vote. So, it would be wrong to suggest the DA "won them over".
In fact, for all its success last year, the DA managed only to match its 2014 achievement — securing just over 4m votes.
The DA’s problems run deeper. The percentage of black votes the party secured hardly budged in 2016 and can be estimated to remain at about 6% — roughly where it stood in 2014.
Of course, there is no doubt that there are new black voters in the DA pool today, for various complex reasons. But the watershed moment the party so desperately desires never materialised. Just as it has battled to break the 30% barrier nationally, so it continues to struggle to breach the 10% barrier when it comes to black voters, the two being irrevocably linked.
After the 2014 elections, the DA proudly trumpeted its black support. "We grew our support among black South Africans from 0.8% in 2009 to approximately 6% in 2014," then party leader Helen Zille said at the time. "Roughly 760,000 black South Africans voted for the DA."
But after the 2016 elections, the DA was silent on the subject. And, given the pressure on the party on this front, no news is not necessarily good news.
When the Financial Mail asked the DA why it hadn’t laid out its growth among black voters after 2016’s elections, a spokesman said: "We choose if and when to release our own analyses.
"Unlike 2014, our post-election communication was centred on us becoming the biggest party in Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane, winning Cape Town with an increased majority, and keeping the ANC below 50% in Johannesburg. These were
our key objectives for the local government elections."
The DA has excellent momentum coming out of 2016 and there is appetite for change in SA
— Phumzile van Damme
But growing among black voters was an objective too; possibly the key objective.
The party was equally cagey about elaborating on the electoral maths that underpinned its claims that it would occupy the Union Buildings.
On this point, spokesman Phumzile van Damme would only say: "The DA has excellent momentum coming out of 2016 and there is appetite for change in SA." She then added: "It is not possible to reveal the details of our electoral strategy, which remains confidential."
Given this coyness, it is reasonable to ask whether the party’s goal is realistic. At face value, it would appear to be little more than a pipe dream. At the very least, it is incredibly risky to make that prediction two and a half years before election day.
Ultimately, there are three possible scenarios.
First, new leadership brings new life for the ANC, and the 3m ANC voters who didn’t vote last year return to the fold. In that scenario, the ANC easily breaches the 11m-vote barrier, securing a majority well above the 50% threshold. While the DA would grow, it would still struggle to breach 30%.
Second, new leadership fails to bring new life into the ANC, but does arrest further decline. Those 3m ANC voters stay away — but no more. Thus, the 2016 results are replicated. This still leaves the ANC with a majority, albeit a shaky one. The DA again struggles to breach 30%.
Third, the ANC implodes or splits. There is significant growth as a result for both the DA and the EFF or, possibly, even a new breakaway party to align with. This might be enough to bring the ANC below 50% and allow the DA to form a national government coalition. The DA exceeds 30% and the EFF, in turn, the 10% barrier.
The outstanding DA election machinery will ensure, as it does every election, that it absolutely maxes out on its potential. But the real question is: do those 3m missing ANC voters form part of that potential?
Either way, there appears no likely credible scenario in which the DA can win outright power. As things stand, history suggests the DA is either being very brave or very foolish by implying it can.
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