In the South African election at the end of May, the African National Congress (ANC) failed to win a parliamentary majority, for the first time since it was swept into power in 1994 following the end of apartheid. In order to form a government, ANC president and business tycoon Cyril Ramaphosa has now entered into a coalition with the Democratic Alliance (DA), a right-wing, bourgeois party which overtly represents the interests of white business owners. This alliance cements an abandonment of any claim to represent the interests of the black working class. JACOB O’NEILL reports.
The election
The ANC took just 40% of the vote, compared to 62% in 2019 poor showing in the election. This comes against a background of anger at the corruption which is rampant within the party, while the black working class faces an economic and social crisis. South Africa’s GDP, at $373bn in 2024, is the highest in Africa. Yet around 33% of the population is unemployed, while the World Bank reports that over half South Africa’s population lives below the poverty line. The townships and shanty cities that surround South Africa’s major population centres have become home to vast numbers of impoverished immigrant workers from other parts of the continent.
Meanwhile, the country’s public services are failing. The primary cause of this is the corruption of ANC officials, who treat the wealth of the state as their own. $83 billion is lost every year to corruption in providing welfare provisions. The energy company Eskom has so much of its finances siphoned off that since 2007 it has been unable to operate at full capacity across the country, leading to rolling blackouts.
Both the economic crisis for the working class and the endemic corruption of the governing party are the result of the settlement 30 years ago that ended the apartheid system in South Africa. The ANC has rested on the laurels it garnered at the time, as one of the largest and most internationally recognised liberation movements, with its leader Nelson Mandela universally venerated. But the reality is that the ANC negotiated with South Africa’s white ruling class to isolate the revolutionary elements of the movement and preserve the capitalist infrastructure of the country. The ANC argued this would generate wealth, lift the working class out of poverty and bring about freedom and equality for the masses through a so-called ‘national democratic revolution’. The imperialist powers were determined to keep South Africa within the imperialist fold, and leaders of the ANC were swiftly rewarded.
The ANC’s 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) neoliberal economic programme effectively handed over large swathes of industry to private investors. As capitalist investment flowed into South Africa, many in the governing party ensured a lucrative slice of the cake for themselves. The programme for Black Economic Empowerment, for example, created not just a black middle class but a super-rich black bourgeoisie. The current president, Cyril Ramphosa, once firebrand leader of the National Union of Mineworkers under apartheid rule, acquired a stake in nearly every key sector from telecoms and the media to beverages and fast food (he owned the South African franchise of the US chain, McDonalds) to mining. He became a director of the British platinum mining company Lonmin, which owned the Marikana mine where 34 striking miners were shot dead by South African security forces in 2012. By 2015 he was one of South Africa’s wealthiest politicians with a net worth of about $450m.
Another broken promise of the post-apartheid era is over land ownership. At the end of apartheid in 1994, nearly 78 million hectares of farmland (63% of the total) was owned by a minority of white farmers – the black rural majority was forced to subsist on a smaller area of the poorest quality land as a result of racist laws. Only 20% of this white-owned farmland has been transferred to black farmers since then, despite the ANC’s promise of redistributing 30% within its first five years in government.
A reactionary alliance
Now, in order to remain in government, the ANC has completely betrayed its anti-apartheid roots, entering into an electoral coalition with reactionary forces that include not just the Democratic Alliance but also the racist Afrikaner party the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), the anti-immigration Patriotic Alliance (PA) and the conservative Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). FF+ minister Pieter Groeneweld has become Minister of Correctional Services and the Democratic Alliance is in charge of Home Affairs, Basic Education and Agriculture. To preserve this fragile Government of National Unity, the ANC will come under huge pressure to drop any remaining progressive policies, such as guaranteeing universal healthcare and its opposition to Israel in the International Court of Justice.
The ANC vote, which was already falling, was further undermined by the newly-formed Mkhonto weSizwe (MK) party of former ANC president Jacob Zuma, which took 58 seats in the election, putting it in third place. While Zuma himself faces multiple charges of corruption while in office, his party’s promises of radical land redistribution attracted many former ANC voters from the impoverished black working classes. The key victory was in KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC was almost entirely replaced by MK. The MK party is, however, profoundly reactionary on social questions, with Zuma promising to cement the authority of tribal chiefs, imprison all single mothers on Robben Island and roll back the few legal protections that LGBT+ people in the country have. Another winner from disillusionment with the ANC was the Patriotic Alliance, an anti-immigration party. The rise in xenophobia in South Africa has led to race riots and the rise of reactionary vigilante gangs, such as Operation Dudula, which have used physical violence against immigrants and their sympathisers, particularly members of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
The EFF failed to make significant gains in the election. It lost five seats to the MK party and was relegated to fourth place. The EFF is a self-described Marxist-Leninist and Pan-African organisation, formed by the former chairman of the ANC Youth League Julius Malema. It has called for land redistribution, expanded nationalisation, legal protection for LGBT+ individuals, a more progressive immigration policy and a move away from the imperialist foreign policy of the ANC, even proposing sending arms to the Palestinian resistance. In a reflection of the shifting alliances and disarray of political movements in South Africa, it has now entered into an unlikely alliance with the MK Party.
For the black working class, the election offers no resolution to the economic crisis, poverty, unemployment, crime and crumbling services that are the legacy of the ANC’s 30 years in power. National liberation ended apartheid but has failed to bring the real freedom and change that were promised. But with a history of organised, militant struggle against injustice, and as it finally begins to reject the leadership of the ANC, there is no doubt new, militant organisations will arise to put the interests and demands of the working to the fore once more.
