Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi has the unenviable task of reversing the ANC’s rapidly declining electoral fortunes in the country’s most populous and economically active province.
The hapless former education department spokesperson has limped from one crisis to the next. As ANC chair, his poor judgment in coalition-building across the province has led to a collapse in service delivery in key cities.
Lesufi, however, did perhaps stumble on an initiative which, if it had been implemented effectively, could have provided an answer to South Africa’s biggest electoral puzzle: youth participation.
Polling by the South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) at the time of the launch of Lesufi’s Nasi iSpani programme — a youth employment initiative that was hugely oversubscribed — showed an uptick in momentum for the ANC in the province. However, the gains were reversed because of problems with the programme and scepticism around the motives behind its launch.
IRR head of strategic communications Herman Pretorius launched the institute’s latest polling last month. This was the survey which, amid the budget impasse, indicated that for the first time since 1994, the DA was polling slightly higher than the ANC.
While this finding dominated headlines, data from the polls threw up other interesting numbers.
For one, there is the worrying picture of voter disengagement. Turnout declined from 89% in 1999 to a low of 58.6% in the 2024 election. Of the registered voting population of 27.7-million people, only 16.2-million cast their vote.
Pretorius says that in 1994, the 63% of the vote obtained by the ANC amounted to about 54% of the entire potential voting population — that is, of all of those old enough and entitled to vote, whether registered or not. However, that figure fell to just 19% in 2024. It implies that the true picture of the ANC’s decline in support is greater than the numbers represent.
“The 2024 election result paints a picture of some stability in ANC support, but it ignores the informal politics of the ANC losing support,” Pretorius says.
“In the same breath, it also doesn’t mean the opposition is gaining support. But we’ve gone from an ANC which commanded a clear majority to an ANC that commands 40% of a politically engaged minority. That is, I think, the real test of our politics. Will we continue to see electoral participation as something that only a minority of the population engages in?”
This is not unusual in young democracies, Pretorius adds. “What often happens is that you get a few generations that systematically become disenfranchised, and then there’s some sort of pivot where a new generation of voters become enfranchised and decide ‘No, actually, we are going to become a bit more activist and politically involved’.”
This pivot is often ushered in by the youth, a key target for political parties across the spectrum. But to date, no party has captured their attention or imagination, at least not enough to mark a genuine shift in electoral participation. This is why Pretorius believes that while a tie-up of the ANC, the MK Party and the EFF could happen, it is unlikely to animate the youth enough to cause this pivot.
The ANC, he says, was popular due to its liberation legacy and for its progress in rebuilding in the aftermath of the racist, isolated and largely broken apartheid regime. Pretorius says Thabo Mbeki’s tenure as president from 1999 to 2007 is underrated in its accomplishments.
“The Mbeki era up to the mid-2000s genuinely saw good service delivery. It wasn’t just a fad, it wasn’t just PR. The Mbeki economy could have been stronger, but it at least was nimble and sophisticated and liberalised enough to benefit from the Asian commodity boom,” says Pretorius.
“Unemployment was nudged and pressured downwards. Two successes were ending apartheid, and that first decade of relatively sober, effective government and seeing the money become available for things like the welfare state. Those things culminated in the 69.7% victory that the ANC got in 2004.”
That was 21 years ago and the further South Africa gets from that era, the less mileage the ANC can extract from it and the less easily it can leverage those successes with a new generation.
The EFF could have been the party which caused the pivot, the youth party to grab the attention of a new generation of voters. But after a strong start, it stumbled as it became enmeshed in ANC politics, which was uninteresting to the youth, who saw no benefit from it.
“The EFF — I think if it was going to be a youth breakthrough party, it would have happened already,” says Pretorius. “The youth unemployment crisis in South Africa is 10 years ahead of the economy as a whole. We’ve been in this crisis for the whole lifetime of the EFF, and it has not been able to assert the type of dominance that an ascendant youth party would get.”
MK is even less likely to do so, with a geriatric, conservative frontman in Jacob Zuma and messaging that is out of touch with a modern, connected world.
The DA has an opportunity to make an impact, with young leaders such as Siviwe Gwarube, the basic education minister, or Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. However, the centre of the party remains controlled by an old guard that is off-putting to a new generation.
The trajectory of decline in voter participation is likely to continue, unless the GNU can animate the youth enough to usher in a pivot and spark renewed interest in elections — but so far we have seen the same old tired politics.
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