• Election 2014 will set the stage for a vastly altered political environment in South Africa.
• This will lead up to the 2019 general election which will be more critical for the ANC than the forthcoming election.
• A number of key factors will determine that environment.

South Africa is entering a very interesting, if not challenging period centred around the upcoming general election for which a date has yet to be determined, but which will most likely be in April or early May. But the real fireworks will only start after the elections and in the five years leading up to the next elections in 2019.

While election 2014 is likely to be a watershed moment in the political history of the country, it will be so not so much in respect of what the outcome of the elections may be for the competing political parties in terms of support, but more so in respect of the new political environment it will usher in in South Africa, a political  environment that may be very different from the one that existed up till now in the first twenty years of democracy and African National Congress (ANC) rule in South Africa.

Unlike what many are expecting, this election will not be the crucial one for the ANC, even if it may lose some or even considerable support. The 2014 election election will rather be the scene setter for the really crucial general election in 2019, when the ANC for the first time may face, or be much closer to facing, the very real prospect of being replaced as government.

Who leads the ANC after this election, how it is led, how it deals with its internal alliance problems, how it deals with the massive challenges facing South Africa, and most importantly, how it responds to existing and especially new opposition parties that may emerge with sizeable stakes from these elections, will be critical for the ANC’s survival as government.

The real challenge for the ANC will come from the other main players who will be determined by this year’s election, as well as some further anticipated developments in the labour-political sphere, and after the new political conditions in the country will more clearly have manifested themselves.

Thus, election 2014 will set the stage for a new political era with new political conditions in South Africa and determine who the main actors will be. But what are these new conditions, this new political environment?

No more Madiba Magic

With Nelson Mandela gone, the galvanising respect  for Mandela and the effect of what The Economist calls “the protection of Mandela’s saintly aura"  has also gone.

The ruling party and its leaders will be judged more critically and harshly, and with the bonding glue of “Madiba Magic” no longer there, the stakes will have risen sharply as socio-political stakeholders all try to claim their share of the national pie.

The father of the house has gone and now the children fight over the spoils.

The ANC’s use of the idealised memory of Mandela and not necessarily his actual legacy to gain political mileage,  will become less and less effective as the influence of Mandela fades into history.

And by the time of the 2019 election the so-called born-free generation – those born after 1994 who have little or no connection with the liberation struggle or by that time, with Mandela – will be close to becoming the majority of the electorate. Just this in itself created a whole new political ball game in South Africa.

The glue of a common enemy is gone

The glue provided by fighting a common enemy, apartheid, and which held together a diverse variety of organisations, interest groups, factions, regional interests, and sections of the population in the ANC and in its Alliance with  the South African Communist Party and labour, will finally also have completely disappeared.

The cracks showing in the “broad church” movement – as the ANC has styled itself – are already rapidly multiplying. For instance, the ANC’s biggest and most powerful trade union partner, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) recently severed all ties with the ruling party.

South Africa’s proportional representation system also makes it possible for erstwhile members of the ANC “broad church” to access the legislative system and government on their own as viable new parties or in new alliances with others.

No more trading on the “liberation struggle” legacy

The ANC will find it much harder to continue trading on the legacy of its role as leading the struggle for the liberation of South Africa from apartheid and thereby relying on the unquestioning loyalty of the masses, as it has done until now.

The generation that identifies with that struggle is fading, while the new generation has no specific reverence for it. Members of the new generation are more concerned with securing a better material future for themselves. Things like good education, solid jobs, good living conditions, and the spoils and trappings that come with these, are far more important to them than some historical struggle.

In addition, the racial divide may become less pronounced, especially among the middle classes.

Thus, the blanket protection afforded the ANC by the legacy of the liberation struggle will almost completely disappear disappear between 2014 and 2019. New struggles will be fought on the socio-economic terrain, and it is here where other parties and organisations are already barking loudly in the wings.

The rise of populism

Like much of the rest of the world, South Africa is also experiencing the rise of populism that goes hand in hand with periods of major economic stress, rapid technological changes, the varied impacts of severe environmental changes, and massive urbanisation.

It expresses itself in the rejection of things like exploitation by a small elite, poverty, unemployment, crime, a lack of any positive future prospects and other ills. And it is often accompanied by symptoms such as rising xenophobia and nationalism, while it cuts across traditional ideological boundaries and rejects what is perceived as outdated political and economic systems and institutions.

Around the world it has manifested itself in new political parties and spontaneous, street-based “movements”, such as the Occupy movement in the US, the Five Star Movement in Italy, the Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) in Belgium, the Sweden Democrats, the English Defence League, the National Front in France, while North Africa and the Middle East have experienced the Arab Spring, and in Brazil masses of people have taken to the streets in the Free Fare Movement.

In South Africa it has emerged in developments in the labour and left-wing political spheres as well as in civil society. Examples are the highly unstable and conflicted situation that has evolved on many of the country’s mines – with the Marikana shootings being a pivotal moment  - and among farm labourers in the agricultural sector and within the fishing communities of the Western Cape; the rise of independent unions like the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and independent workers’ committees; other developments in the trade union movement with the country’s biggest, most powerful union, NUMSA, breaking away from the ruling party; and the establishment of new populist political parties like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the Workers’ and Socialist Party (WASP). Even moderate parties like the main opposition Democratic Alliance are also lately given to engaging in some rather populist type activities.

Apart from this, a phenomenon that is less visible outside of the working class townships and informal settlements where they mainly operate, has been the proliferation of movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo (isiZulu for “people of the shacks”). To this can be added the escalation of spontaneous community protests against poor or no service delivery by government.

The power of this populism lies in emotion rather than pure logic. A recent editorial in The Observer quoting Professor Paul Taggart of the University of Sussex  points out how populism has “proved enormously successful in reshaping the mainstream political discourse, influencing policies and closing down a debate informed by empirical evidence rather than emotional heat”. The editorial warns that this is dangerous for democracy.

Thus, the growing pressures the ANC as government, or any government, will have to face from this phenomenon are becoming very evident.

The new socialist challenge to capitalism

The rise of populist tendencies worldwide, the disenchantment of the masses with political and business elites, global and regional economic and financial pressures, high levels of unemployment, sharply rising prices for food, accommodation and transport, among others, have opened up new political space for socialists and left-wing working class-based movements and organisations everywhere.

Within the populist political space they are using the current challenges that established democratic systems and capitalism and its systems have been facing since 2008, to challenge these systems and regain the ground socialism and communism lost in the 1990s.

This goes hand in hand with current debates and soul-searching that many of the world’s systems – political, economic, etc. – are outdated. In South Africa this is manifesting itself in the left-wing labour-political sphere and is likely to have a big impact on issues, debates and developments between the elections of 2014 and 2019.

Depending on how much ground they manage to gain during and after the forthcoming elections, these political, labour and civil society organisations and movements in the left-wing and populist sphere could end up determining the agenda for the anticipated ongoing national economic policy debate in South Africa.

Resistance to the growing threat to South Africa’s constitutional democracy

In recent years there has been a growing display of what can arguably be described as unconstitutional and/or anti-constitutional behaviour in the ANC.

For instance, there have been the the attacks on the Public Protector, on media freedom, on the judiciary, the ANC’s seeking of a two-thirds majority to unilaterally change the constitution, and so forth. The high levels of corruption and serious delivery failures also tend to encourage less democratic tendencies.

This is likely to get worse regardless of whether the ANC achieves the two-thirds majority it desires or not: if it does, it is likely to abuse that majority to change the constitution and it will most likely govern with a measure of arrogance; if it does not, it may start panicking as it sees its power waning, and may resort to more repressive or undemocratic actions to try and retain power.

The general public, civil society movements, opposition political parties, labour federations, and other organisations will most likely be alarmed at either prospect and mobilise opposition that may gain substantial ground between the next two elections.

The forming of alliances and coalitions

The proportional representation system in South Africa affords even the smallest party a voice, albeit a rather ineffective one when used alone.

The natural tendency for political parties worldwide in such systems is to enter into election pacts, election alliances and coalition governments.

As the ANC  loses ground – which appears very likely in the forthcoming election - and as more parties enter the political system at all three levels of government, coalition-forming is going to become the name of the game.

That was the route followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) in first coming to power in Cape Town and a number of municipalities, and later in the Western Cape. Only last week the DA again chose this option when it announced there would be a merger or coming-together of some kind of it and the small Agang SA party party of Dr Mamphela Ramphele.

Current research surveys suggest there is a good chance of coalition governments replacing the ANC in one or two more provinces in the forthcoming election. But if it does not happen in this election, it will probably be a route more aggressively pursued by parties on the left as well as in the centre-right after 2014 leading up to the 2019 elections.

These then are the conditions and developments most likely to gain traction following this year’s general election and which will present South Africa with a substantially altered political environment by 2019 when the next election will take place.

This analysis has been adapted from a political briefing that Political Analyst & Editor Stef Terblanche presented in a Barclays Bank / Absa Capital Investor Teleconference on January 23, 2014.

Written by Stef Terblanche, Political Analyst & Editor at Africa-International Communications