In the apartheid era, there were two dominant South African political movements — the United Party (in power from 1934 to 1948) and the National Party (1948 to 1994). Each at its peak achieved a huge majority of white votes. For many years it was unthinkable that they would ever be ejected from power, let alone disappear. But they were embraced by both fates. It turned out they had an Ozymandian permanency.
Is the ANC the third dominant political party that is now set to decline, fracture and even disappear? It is not inevitable — but it has become thinkable. The arithmetic of parliamentary representation determines that as large parties decline, small ones grow — but they need to keep growing. Only big parties can do the big, difficult things.
From 1961 until 1974 the Progressive Party, the ancestor of the DA, held only Helen Suzman’s Houghton seat in the white parliament. As the old United Party of Hertzog, Smuts and Graaff fractured in the 1970s, the Progressive Party benefited and became the Progressive Reform Party and then the Progressive Federal Party (PFP).
But there were times in the 1970s and 1980s when it seemed that a liberal, anti-apartheid party like the Progs, as they were known, had no future. In the 1987 whites-only general election, the PFP gained only 14% of the vote, against 26% for the reactionary Conservative Party (CP). It is widely forgotten that the CP became the official opposition. South Africa seemed set for a lurch to the right.
With the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, everything changed. The PFP became the Democratic Party (DP) and went backwards, gaining only 1.73% in the first democratic election in 1994. Then, as the National Party disintegrated, the DP grew into the DA.
In 2004 the DA took 12% of the national vote and 50 seats, growing to 16% overall in the municipal elections in 2006. By 2014 it had risen to 22%. Yet a decade later, the DA was still at 22% — only six percentage points higher than in 2006. It seemed to have hit an iron ceiling.
That may now have changed. The DA’s elective conference last week brought in a genuinely fresh generation of politicians. Former leaders Tony Leon (now 69) and Helen Zille (75) cut their political teeth in the apartheid era. The new DA leader, Geordin Hill-Lewis, was born in 1986. He is not yet 40.
There is something else in the air. The DA has finally realised that to take on the ANC ideologically at a national level is not of much interest to voters. The action, as it always should have been, is at the municipal level, where the ANC cannot conceal its appalling record.
Zille, a tough political veteran uniquely qualified by her combination of intellect and huge administrative experience, has put the ANC in a state of terror as she runs for executive mayor of Joburg.
Her chances of winning, with the DA as at least the dominant partner in a coalition, seem to be backed by Social Research Foundation polling that shows the DA at 39% support in Joburg, with the ANC at 30%.
When the natural party of opposition starts being seen, by voters and opponents, as a potential natural party of government, a major battle has been won.
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