I really am worried about my province. It is going to be lead by a party that wants to get rid of the constitution, constitutional court, wants districts to be lead by tribal leaders and the main man in charge is a convicted criminal.
This country is nuts and I wish I lived somewhere else.
The hopeful in me wish that this is a chance for the ANC and the DA to bury the hatched, hold each other accountable and actually just run a country.
One can hope.
With Cyril, I think it is a possibility. In the future, I donât know as Iâve got no clue as to their succession plans.
The fact is that theyâre going to have to give up some of their power whether they like it or not. Letâs just hope they donât give in to some of the more radical sacrifices that the other nuts are demanding. Havenât looked too much into these, but I know the EFF said one non-negotiable for them is that the EFF must be minister of finance.
The ANC is non-negotiable on the NHI and I think so is the DA, so I think if any of the other radical parties are willing to give in on the NHI, weâre fooked.
So, bar a few outstanding voting districts and some objections that wonât have a material effect on the results, thatâs it.
My thoughts:
TL:DR:
- ANC needs to find coalition partner/s that will help it retain relevance and the ability govern.
- The threats from the Zumastans should not be taken lightly.
- We have too many political parties.
- Non-voters - shame on you (unless you have a decent reason.)
Nationally, support for the ANC declined by almost 17%. Thatâs a huge slap in the face for the party that âwill rule till Jesus returnsâ. There is a delicious irony in that those ridiculous words were uttered by the Corrupter-in-Chief of the hastily formed MK Party who claimed a large portion (14,6%) of the ANCs losses. That said, that feeling of schadenfreude should be quickly tempered by the realisation that Zuma and his MK cadres will be the catalyst for a lot of challenges the country will face over the next five years.
To my mind, the soundest solution for the country will be one in which the ANC accepts the need to shake off its revolutionary comrade mindset and evolve into a modern 21st century political party. A coalition / unity government agreement with the DA (and possibly the IFP if that gets the two of them a stronger footing in KZN) makes the most sense. The ANC must recognise that, despite their many shortcomings and their continued reluctance to make Tannie Helen retire to a beachfront house in Hermanus, the DA are a capable governance party.
The old ANC hardliners in the RET faction have, to a large degree, split off into the EFF and now MK. Those remaining need to be excised and replaced. Everyone named in the Zondo Commissionâs State Capture report still remaining in the partiesâ senior structures needs to be charged or shown the door. Pulling the ANC closer to the centre from its right-leaning Marxist socialist roots may be a bitter pill for some in the ruling party to swallow, but if the country is to progress and retain its position as a global role-player and the leading African nation, they will need to find a more moderate centre-right position that can be offset against the DAâs more centre-left stance.
Allowing both sides to maintain a degree of their identity while still making an effort to work together for the betterment of the country as a whole is the only way either of the two parties remains in power beyond 2029. If the next five years are characterised by infighting and petty party politics with a focus on only the politics of personality and ego stroking, I reckon both the ANC and the DA run the risk of losing even more support, perhaps to the point that they will both slip out of the P1 and P2 positions. And if that does happen, then we are truly done for as a functioning nation.
The Zumaâs (Jacob and Duduzile) veiled threats if the IEC declares the results tonight, as they plan to, should not be ignored. âNobody must declare tomorrow. People will be provoking us.â These are the same shitheads who stoked the 2021 riots. Every one of them should already be behind bars for that and should have their stays extended for undermining this election and the democracy with their threats.
We have way too many political parties. While I appreciate the âeveryone has the rightâ open democracy nature of the system, there must be a way to reduce the number of parties - especially on the National Ballot. Iâm in no way advocating for a silly US style two party type system. But surely the reduction in administration, logistics, and practicalities of having fewer parties on the ballot would be better. And the addition of a third ballot paper this year to allow for the Regional vote to include Independent candidates has got to be reconsidered. The only one of the Independent candidates that had a hope of achieving anything notable was Zackie Achmat in the WCape. And while I personally like a lot of his positions, securing just 10 000+ votes and only 0,5% of the regional vote has also got be a concern for the IEC and its operations. Imagine in the next election if thereâs double the amount of Independent candidates? Heck, imagine if thereâs 10 times as many. No reason there canât or wonât be.
Lastly, that Voter Turnout figure is extremely disappointing. If you could vote and didnât, Iâd love to hear why not. The recent history of our country is characterised by the struggle to secure the right to vote for all citizens. The right to have a say in the future of the country and who leads it. That so many eligible to vote havenât even bothered registering to vote is disturbing by itself. That over 40% of those that could vote never did is just shameful. You donât make a statement by not voting. If none of the (many, many) parties aligns with your principles and you feel you are not represented by any of them, spoil your ballot to express your opinion. But donât no show on election day because you just couldnât be bothered to get out of bed and stand in a queue, and then expect anyone to listen to your bitches and moans and complaints about the way the country is going.
The Electoral Commission of South Africa will announce the election results at 18:00 at the National ROC in Midrand, Johannesburg.
https://twitter.com/IECSouthAfrica
Well said Greg, all valid and good points.
Completely agree, well stated opinion backed by facts.
Well written and I think I agree with pretty much all of it.
Some of my thoughts below.
Coalitions. The ANC-DA coalition would be ideal. However, the ANC has already stated that the NHI is a non-negotiable so that scares me that theyâll consider a EFF or MK coalition because theyâll be much more open to the NHI (anything for some power). But maybe theyâll be willing to make a compromise on that when the DA compromises on BBBEE.
If the ANC donât form coalitions with either of the two major whackjob parties, then DA and their partners will basically take all of Gauteng and if they actually partner with the DA and their partners, they can even take KZN from MK. I think either of these should be very good outcomes.
As for the EFF and MK, I unfortunately correctly predicted that MK will take the EFFâs position in 3rd place (which I would have been fine with), but I thought they would at least take a bigger chunk of the EFFâs votes. Together they are now stronger than the DA so they could actually do some damage. I think their views are quite in alignment so coalition between them is likely. Sadly, their high number of votes is very telling of the mentality of a lot of people in the country which could become a serious problem in future elections.
Too many political parties. Unfortunately this is true and the bad part is that they mostly split from the DA. Everyone is bloody power hungry and overestimate their worth and so a new political party is formed. At least they usually end up as part of the DA coalition afterwards. The DA will however seriously need to make improvements. This would have been the ideal election to gain a much bigger share of the votes and they only improved by an unacceptable 1% and theyâve by far received the most donations of any of the other parties. Surely they could have somehow turn some of that money into votes?
As for the poor voter turnout, this is unfortunately understandable due to the pathetic performance of the IEC this year. Iâve heard of multiple people that after hours and hours of standing in queues, finally just giving up and not voting. I agree that people that didnât bother with voting should be ashamed, but this year a lot of blame does lie with the IEC. There were 4 queues at some voting stations like hours and I think our queue stood for just over two hours. Finally arriving inside the tent, there was one guy with a massive name list searching to scratch your name off and then only 3 voting booths. Two huge bottlenecks. When we were finished, the queue next to us (surnames from M to P), barely moved so they were standing not much further from where we were standing next to them about 90 minutes earlier and probably stood for much much longer. Other people that I know stood for 5 to 8 hours. Then Iâve heard of people in the rural areas that didnât bother to vote because there was pretty much only one queue which was kilometers long. If I know of this many reports in my very small circle of people I know, then I can only imagine that the issue scaled significantly to other and especially rural areas.
This should have been the biggest election in over 'n decade and the IEC seriously blundered this.
I do love that, even though AI struggles with words and letters, I can clearly make out the word biltong under the flag on the lapel. My wife says that might just be me projecting.
TLDR News did a nice summary, and the part that stood out for me was that the DA is too comfortable being the ANTI-ANC that they most likely will not form a coalition.
I agree with most sentiments in this topic though, whoever gets to govern just needs to run the country properly without this big headed power struggleâŚ
PS: Like @shrike I am ashamed of the province I live in right now. How the MK got so many votes just means that common decency is dead, and people do not care about having an honest functional government.
Theyâre already tearing each other apart it seemsâŚ
Sadly, common decency along with its sibling, common sense has become not very common at all, more endangered than anything else.
Yes, that is pretty stupid! This person assumes the exact same amount of people voted in 2 different provinces 
First sitting of the National Assembly at the Cape Town ICC.
Big swathe of empty seats in the roomâŚ
From the Daily Maverickâs Live Blog:
MPs are standing to attention for the singing of the national anthem. At this stage it appears that the MK Party has indeed made good on its promise to boycott proceedings: no sign of them.
Also absent at this time: the EFF caucus, although several Fighters were earlier seen milling around. Perhaps they are waiting for colleagues who are in the âProgressive Caucusâ press conference across town.
Lies⌠GNU is âGNUâs Not Unixâ
