Shock election results hit governing parties globally

Time to draw breath at the end of an unrelentingly dense and tense political year. It was billed as “The Year of Elections”, with more than half the world’s population eligible to vote in about 60 national elections. Now that the people have spoken it needs to be renamed “The Year of Disincumbency” — for 2024 proved to be a tricky year to be a governing party, adorned as it was with a number of shock results. 

Arguably the biggest surprise came in India, where Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party lost its majority. No serious analyst or polling organisation had predicted such an outcome. 

In Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority for the first time since 2009. In the United Kingdom, the Conservatives suffered their worst election result since 1832. 

The centralist alliance in France, of which President Emmanuel Macron is the pivotal figure, fell more than 14  percentage points, outflanked to the left and right. Its ambitious minority government fell inside three months. 

And the Democrats were emphatically defeated in the United States — not only did Donald Trump win back the White House but the Republicans now control both the Senate and the House of Representatives. 

Closer to home, in Botswana, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party, which had governed since the country’s independence in 1966, was voted out of power, while in Namibia, Swapo — the dominant party since Namibia’s independence in 1990 — fell within three seats of losing a majority that stood at 87% just five years ago. 

Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, incumbents have been removed from office in 40 of 54 elections in Western democracies. Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, has referred to it as “a kind of electoral long Covid” — shrewdly linking the plight of incumbents to the inflationary consequences of the pandemic, the dark shadow of history casting itself icily overhead. 

Pandemic, inflation, economic depression, the rise of fascism, World War. The story of the 1920s and 1930s on repeat mode now: not so much a sleepwalk as a blind march into another abyss. Can the centre hold this time? 

Anti-European Union, far-right parties made significant gains in the elections for the European parliament, at the expense of pro-EU moderates. More alarmingly, in the September state elections in the east German state of Thuringia, the Alternative for Germany became the first far-right party since the Nazi era to win a plurality of seats in a German state election. 

In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party garnered the highest share of French votes in the European parliament elections, obtaining 31%, and now looks well on track to win the presidency in 2027. 

But sclerotic old Europe does not necessarily reflect the global equilibrium point. There are reasons to be more sanguine about the state of democracy in other parts of the world, not least South Africa, where support for the ANC fell from 57.2% to 40.2%. Nonetheless, it calmly accepted the loss of its 30-year grip on majority rule. 

Not even the pollster Wayne Sussman, whose opinion poll the weekend before election day had Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party at 14%, believed what he saw. It was another highly unpredictable outcome. 

Yet, it turned into an admirably tranquil “second transition”; the end of ANC dominion passed without so much as a whiff of complaint about electoral rigging or trying to hang on desperately to power. This should not be underestimated. 

There were tense moments in the days that followed, but thanks to a usefully tight constitutional timetable that focused minds, a power-sharing deal between (in the main) centralist parties was done. 

The dismal assortment of thieves and populist demagogues were pushed to the periphery — at least for the time being. 

But the political calendar waits for no one. This time next year we will be less than a year away from the next local government election and the main protagonists will be sharpening their arrows ahead of what will no doubt be seen as a referendum on the government of national unity (GNU). 

This, in turn, will feed into the national conference of the ANC a year later, at the end of 2027. So far, the internal polling of both the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) is encouraging to both parties: the electorate seems happy with the way in which the leaders of the respective parties played the cards that the electorate dealt them on 29 May. 

This is a — probably the — critical factor. 

If either party senses that the power-sharing arrangement is hurting them electorally, then the incentive to remain in it diminishes greatly and the impetus for an anti-GNU — or, rather, anti the “grand coalition” with the DA — grows concomitantly, and the chance of a centralist moderate being elected by the December 2027 ANC national congress as the successor to Ramaphosa fades. 

Given the state of many municipalities across the country, it could be carnage for the ANC. Will the DA really want to be sharing power with such a party at that moment, perceived to be propping it up in power in the national sphere? 

The temptation to create distance will be strong. It will require steady nerves, on all sides. Just as in those fetid days of early June when the negotiations see-sawed their way towards their precarious conclusion, real leadership will need to be shown — leadership that puts the long-term interests of the country ahead of the short-term interests of both individual politicians and their organisations, which is asking a lot. Perhaps too much. 

In the meantime, the DA will probably stick around. 

One should not underestimate the pull of real power. DA leader John Steenhuisen is now in the cabinet. After years in opposition this is a very alluring turn of events: the blue light security detail; the first class travel; the sumptuous Beijing banquets and the fascinating encounter with your Chinese opposite number; the hand-shaking and the bilateral agreement; a sense of doing something. 

It’s hard to walk away. But the DA now also has two centres of power. There is strategic distance between all that and the woman who remains the hard-nosed power behind the throne — Helen Zille — an image that a recent spate of hard-hitting interviews is clearly intended to reinforce. Her job is to keep her eye on the long-term interests of her party, balanced with those of the country, and the managerial responsibilities of running a competitive party organisation. 

How much actual power the DA has in the GNU is a matter of debate and contestation. The precise meaning of clause 19.3 of the statement of intent that was hastily signed — initially between just the ANC and the DA — on the morning of the first sitting of the new National Assembly in June, will need to be clarified. 

Clause 19.3 states that when consensus cannot be found among all of the coalition parties, decisions can be made by “sufficient consensus”, which is defined as agreement between parties in the GNU that represent 60% of the seats in the National Assembly. Only the ANC and DA can mathematically meet that 60% threshold.

The ANC’s leadership is denying the obvious implication of this clause — or, perhaps better put, is in denial. Since a combination of cowardice and ambition will prevent ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula from admitting to his compadres that he signed a deal that gives the DA a veto power over cabinet decisions, another way of confirming the correct interpretation of the disputed clause will have to be found. 

Otherwise the DA might just find itself with no alternative but to walk away if the ANC plays too fast and loose with the agreement and its relationship with the DA inside cabinet. 

Which is why it would be wise not to be preoccupied by the question of whether the DA stays or goes, as far too many people — here at home and in the investment world — are. If the DA leaves, the government will not fall. Most importantly, Vulindlela, the structural reform programme first formed in 2018 when Ramaphosa came to power, and which is now yielding serious fruit, will continue on its steady way. 

Its success has nothing to do with the GNU — which is really just the cherry on the top of the cake. 

For three national and local elections in a row, electoral support for the DA has hovered around 21% to 22%. Electoral support for the DA has proved to be remarkably resilient — or stubbornly stuck, depending on how you care to look at it. Substantial growth is likely to remain elusive. The real battleground will continue to be for the remaining 80%, where Zuma and his band of criminal thugs are lurking with intent. 

The battle to hold the centre has only just begun. As one GNU insider puts it, “If the cherry goes, who will then eat the cake?”

Richard Calland is a visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Governance and a founding partner at political risk consultancy The Paternoster Group.