In the summer of 2010, then president Jacob Zuma stood in the old assembly in parliament at the launch of the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC’s) inaugural “Atlas of Results”, praising the commission for being at the forefront of electoral transparency in the world.
Back then, South Africa was a different country and Zuma was at the height of his political power.
He had this to say: “The IEC has done so well in its work each year that some regional organisations in the world no longer see a need to send election observers to this country when we hold elections because they know that these will proceed well.
“There are few, if any, countries that take transparency to this level.”
Fast-forward to 2024 and Zuma is a former convict, constitutionally ineligible for office; he faces multiple legal challenges — including the long-awaited corruption trial linked to the arms deal; has launched a full-scale attack on the party he joined at the age of 16; and he’s campaigning for a new political outfit, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Party. He also seems to have made an about-turn on his stance towards the IEC.
Since his announcement on December 16 that he would be campaigning for the MK Party and would vote for it, Zuma has traversed the country, addressing any audience who cares to listen and slamming the party that twice elevated him to the country’s top job. But the message that is most damaging and threatens the very fabric of South Africa’s 30-year-old democracy is his attack on the IEC and its processes.
Addressing a recent gathering, he raised concern about “votes being counted in secret”, and potential electoral rigging and fraud.
Zuma’s attack on the IEC comes at a volatile time — the governing ANC is facing its toughest election yet, weighed down by debilitating energy and logistics crises, a shattered economy, corruption and incompetence. The democratic edifice is arguably at its weakest.
Says IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo: “It is a problem when you impugn the integrity of the institution [the IEC]. The integrity of the institution speaks to the integrity of the entire electoral process.”
That calls into question the legitimacy of the electoral results on which the makeup of the national and provincial legislatures is based. “You are undermining the country’s entire democratic foundation,” he tells the FM.
For political analyst Ebrahim Fakir, the concern is the broader decline of public trust in South African institutions — and the IEC is not immune to this. In particular, he blames politicians for perceptions around declining public trust in the institution, despite its robust processes. Still, he concedes, the IEC is also partly to blame, as it should respond more openly and promptly to unwarranted criticism.
It is a problem when you impugn the integrity of the institution [the IEC]. The integrity of the institution speaks to the integrity of the entire electoral process
— Sy Mamabolo
Countering Zuma’s attack, Mamabolo says the IEC processes are among the most transparent in the world, carried out in the presence of political party agents and election observers at voting stations across the country. Results are tallied using a “double capture system” and confirmed by an independent auditor.
“It is not correct that this happens in the dark. Parties are able to look at the captured results and a scanned copy of the results slip ... It is really a transparent system.”
The IEC also works closely with a National Party Liaison Committee, on which all parties are represented. If a party raises an issue, the IEC will deal with it to ensure the integrity of the final results. For instance, when political parties raised concerns over potential double voting in the 2019 election, the IEC ordered an audit to resolve the matter.
“That committee is very robust, where there are problems we do resolve them in a way that is mindful of the democratic process,” he says.
One possible issue in the upcoming polls relates to the sheer number of small political parties that have registered — 350 so far. While larger parties such as the ANC and DA will have the capacity to place party agents at most voting stations, the smaller parties are unlikely to be able to do so. Therefore the IEC is “going to make sure we give every political party the opportunity to have party agents at voting stations to observe, but on a rotational basis”.
When matters are not resolved within the party liaison committee, there is further recourse if parties believe their concerns have not been adequately dealt with by the IEC. The Electoral Court has resolved many disputes in the past — and issues can even be taken to the Constitutional Court.
The MK Party is a continuation of Zuma’s strategy — only, this time around he himself is promoting and propping up the alternative to the ANC
Zuma’s sudden amnesia on the electoral process is telling, given his previous support of the IEC and his countless visits to voting stations and even the national results centre in the past.
It reveals his strategy going into the election.
On the back foot in 2019, having been recalled from office by the ANC the previous year, Zuma and his allies were behind the formation of a number of splinter parties that contested that election. Among these were the African Transformation Movement, which Zuma ally Mzwanele Manyi fronted, and Black First Land First, led by Andile Mngxitama. Zuma had encouraged South Africans to vote for Mngxitama after Black First Land First split from the EFF — but he didn’t go as far as discouraging them from voting for the ANC.
As it was, the ANC national executive committee (NEC) at the time launched a probe into the formation of these parties to determine whether they were backed by its own members and leaders. As with most ANC NEC initiatives, it got nowhere. In any event, these smaller parties had minimal impact on the party’s vote share, with disgruntled voters opting to stay at home instead.
The MK Party is a continuation of Zuma’s strategy — only, this time around he himself is promoting and propping up the alternative to the ANC. It’s a last-ditch attempt to stage a political comeback.
However, the new party is unlikely to gain traction outside KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and even there, it may take more votes from parties such as the EFF and the IFP than from the ANC.
That tallies with a recent survey by the Social Research Foundation. It found that Zuma’s favourability, nationally, stands at just 20%, but it’s at 63% in KZN. The foundation concludes that he could, at best, shave off a few percentage points from the ANC in the province.
Zuma’s comments on the IEC are likely setting the stage for him to challenge the outcome of the election after the results are announced. That could prove inflammatory: consider the July 2021 riots, which broke out after the Constitutional Court ordered Zuma’s incarceration. A similar situation played out with the attack on the Capitol in the US on January 6 2021, after Donald Trump refused to accept Joe Biden had ousted him from office.
The ANC for its part has responded with caution to Zuma’s taunting.
It is likely to act against him after the upcoming polls. But senior leaders with influence in KZN have already fanned out in the province to counter his new party. Though ANC leaders have been hesitant to distance themselves from Zuma, they have now been forced to do just that.
A stark example is former Zuma lieutenant and provincial secretary Bheki Mtolo. Just a few months ago, Mtolo and his leadership core had wanted Zuma to campaign on their behalf. Now, with Zuma coming out to denounce the ANC, they’ve rallied behind President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Mtolo has come out swinging, saying former president Thabo Mbeki had handed Zuma a strong ANC, which he proceeded to destroy. Ramaphosa had in turn inherited a broken ANC from Zuma, he said.
As for Ramaphosa, he made it clear to the party faithful at the ANC’s birthday celebrations earlier this month that the splinter party is the “enemy”.
Predictably, the ANC has described the rising opposition to it as an “onslaught against the national democratic revolution”, denouncing new parties with radical-sounding rhetoric. In a likely reference to the MK Party and the EFF, it has spoken of right-wing forces opposed to transformation.
“There are social and political forces working hard to undermine the gains of freedom made over the past three decades,” Ramaphosa said, releasing the party’s annual January 8 statement, which sets the political tone for the year. He dubbed the ANC’s opponents “anti-transformation forces”.
“Another anti-transformation tactic is to ensure that the ANC is locked up in internal struggles that will weaken and destroy it from within. They actively encourage rebel breakaway groupings to erode the support base of the ANC. Often these start as factional conflicts within the ANC but when the movement pushes ahead with its renewal, they mutate into opposition parties that are as opposed to the ANC as the right-wing opponents of transformation,” he said.
“Some of these parties masquerade as more radical than the ANC, but their revolutionary sounding rhetoric cannot hide the reality that they have common cause with the forces opposing transformation.”
In the end, there is an upside to Zuma’s newly formed MK Party: the 81-year-old’s final play for power — and freedom, given his numerous legal woes — is in the open for all to see.
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