EVALUATING the SOUTH AFRICAN ELECTIONS 2019

Widespread Voter Apathy

The 2019 Elections in South Africa experienced an exceptionally low voter turnout. Compared to previous national elections, it was shockingly low. South Africa has never before had a national elections with less than 70% voter turnout. In 2014, the voter turnout was considered low at 72.5%. The overall turnout for the 2019 national elections (including all overseas voters who filled in the VEC10 forms) was 65.1%. This was much lower than anticipated.

A Pyrrhic Victory that Cast a Slur on its Reputation

Tony Iyare, of E-News Nigeria, wrote: “Pulling its worst performance in 25 years, the African National Congress (ANC) wins last week’s elections, underscoring a full term for Cyril Ramaphosa in a pyrrhic victory that cast a slur on its reputation.”

Disastrous Track Record of Failure

Russian Today observed: “As it re-elects hopeless ANC again, do we finally admit that post-apartheid South Africa has failed? The ANC has yet again won a majority in South Africa’s general election, despite its disastrous record, killing hope that the country will turn in the right direction. The West must stop pretending that this is just a glitch. What is wrong with the country that went to the polls to vote for a new national assembly goes well beyond the hard facts – unedifying as those are. It is not just that half the population lives in absolute poverty, but more than a quarter of adults are unemployed, nor is it that the economic growth rate that has stagnated at the low of 2% average for a decade, even as the rest of the world recovered from the global crisis, or the regular blackouts, the violent crimes rates, or that one in five adults is infected with HIV. The story since 1994 is of a country given a historic chance to show the way to prosperity and democracy for Africa – and failing, exactly as the pessimists predicted…”

Re-Electing Corrupt Failures

Sisonke Msimang, of the Washington Post, wrote: “Now that the job is officially his for the next term, the honeymoon must end. On paper, Ramaphosa is the perfect candidate for the clean-up job. He has projected himself as an outsider, the ideal person to lead, because he ostensibly has an arms-length distance from corruption. In reality, Ramaphosa is the ultimate insider. The ANC core-campaign strategy was to confess to its sins – of which there are many. As senior leaders criss-crossed the country in campaign mode, they apologised and promised not to make the same mistakes. Voters seem to have accepted their apologies. The ANC out-paced the next biggest party, the Democratic Alliance, by almost three votes to one. The Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Julius Malema, did well to secure nearly 11% of the national vote, but this was still a distant third.”

Who Won What

A total of 14 political parties won seats in the national South African Parliament. With the majority ANC/South African Communist Party/COSATU Alliance winning 213 parliamentary seats followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) winning 84 seats and the extreme leftist, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), winning 44 seats. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) won 14 seats and the Vryheid Front Plus (VF+) won 10 seats to claim the fourth and fifth positions in parliament. The other 18 seats were split amongst 9 parties.

Lost Deposits Enrich IEC

The competing parties who failed to win a seat in parliament lost their deposits. Parties paid a R200,000 deposit to contest in the national elections and R45,000 for each province they contested. That money was forfeited to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) who made R16.7 million from the forfeited deposits required of participating parties.

Massive Number of Ballots Rejected as Spoiled

With 26,779,025 people registered to vote, turnout was estimated 65.99%. According to the IEC, they voided 235,449 votes – marked as “spoiled ballots.”

Counting the Votes

According to the website of the IEC, the ANC received 10,026,047 votes out of the 17,668,380 in total votes cast. Which was less than the number of votes they have received in any previous election, including 1999, when the population was half of what it is today. All of this underscores the fact that its popularity is seriously on the wane. The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA) received 3,618,994 votes, representing 20.76% of the votes cast, significantly lower than the 22.2%, or 4 million votes, it received in 2014. So in a country of 59 million people, actually only 10 million voted for the ANC.

Vote Shedding by the DA

Before this election, the DA had been growing in leaps and bounds. From 338,000 votes, 1.73% of the electorate in 1994, to 1,527,000 votes (9.56%) in 1999, to 1,931,000 votes (12.37%) in 2004 to 2,946,000 votes (16.66%) in 2009, to 4,092,000 votes (22.23%) in 2014. The DA engaged in what has been described as “vote shedding” in 2019. Evidently the new leader of the DA, Mmusi Maimane, failed to bring in the “black vote” and managed to alienate many of the white and coloured previous supporters of the DA. The DA received only 4.7% of black votes in all of South Africa.

Dramatic Growth for the Freedom Front

The party that grew the most in the recent elections was the Freedom Front Plus. Receiving over 414,864 votes (2.38% of the national vote), VF Plus has increased from 3 to 10 seats in Parliament, plus two Senators in the National Council of Provinces and seven Members of Provincial Council. This represented an over 300% growth.

ACDP Growth

The African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) received 146,262 votes (0.84% of the national electorate), although this was a significant increase from 2014, it was still less than half the votes received by the ACDP in the 1999 elections, when the population was half of what it is today.

Sending Thieves Back to Parliament

Numerous commentators observed that after the ANC leadership had made a big noise about “honest, clean government” and “rooting out the bad eggs”, the ANC candidates for the national assembly included members who have lied under oath in constitutional court and are deeply implicated in the BOSASA and State Capture corruption scandals. In the words of previous ANC president, Thabo Mbeki, the ANC candidate list is “problematic, amounting to sending a whole lot of thieves back to parliament.” Others observed that the ANC list of candidates for the 2019 election looked more like a “most wanted list” at a police station, than a list of potential members of government. Even the left-wings home porn video man was on the ANC list again!

Public Relations Campaign to Convince Voters to Give ANC another Chance to Loot

Mike Davies, founder of political advisory company Kigoda Consulting, told Bloomberg News: “Ramaphosa’s popularity, particularly among constituencies that were deserting the party under Zuma, appears to have played a major role in convincing voters to give the ANC another chance. Ramaphosa promised to address corruption, jobs and inequality have resonated amid ongoing voter skeptism of what opposition parties offer.”

Failure to Prosecute Corruption

However, despite being in office already for 15 months, Ramaphosa has done nothing to bring corrupt ANC officials to prosecution. In fact, to this date, no one can point to anyone even being fired for the Trillions of Rands looted from the country. The African Union calculates that a full 33% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is looted by government corruption every year. Even though Cyril Ramaphosa had been assigned by previous president Zuma to sort out Eskom, the national electricity supply, newspaper headlines declare: “Eskom: R139 Billion Theft Probed – Rampant looting at new power plants pushes state capture costs to R500 Billion.”

Western Cape Rejects ANC

The Western Cape again overwhelmingly rejected the ANC and the EFF, who together barely received 33% of the Western Cape Vote. The DA has twice as many seats in the Western Cape provincial legislature as the ANC. Also interesting is that a poll of DA supporters in the Western Cape revealed that over 66% of DA supporters in the Western Cape would support a Referendum for Independence of the Western Cape (VirtuaCall Survey, April 2019).

South Africa Has Never Had a Free and Fair Election

Founder and President of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, declared that “There has never been a free and fair election in South Africa since 1994 and including 1994.”

Seriously Flawed Election Process

ANC control of state news media, SABC and the vast amounts of public treasury taxpayers money voted for campaigning for the ruling party (the ANC spent over R1 Billion on campaigning for the recent elections – more than all other parties combined) and ongoing controversies and scandals about the IEC, voter fraud, the excessive number of spoiled ballots, lack of ballot papers, inordinate delays and voting stations running out of indelible ink to mark voters, have all pointed to the failure of the IEC to guarantee the integrity of elections in South Africa. Also concerning were the smear tactics engaged to spread malicious slurs and slander against some anti-communist parties.

SA Communist Party Controls the ANC

Many people seem to forget that the African National Congress (ANC) is part of a troika. The South African Communist Party, the African National Congress and COSATU are in alliance. If one goes onto the SACP website, you can see that the Communist Party claims that although the SACP will not be placing any candidates in the upcoming election, they advise all cadres to vote for the ANC candidate. In fact every ANC President has been a senior member of the South African Communist Party Politburo.

Are the ANC and EFF Working Together?

Also important to note is that the ANC and EFF are in effective alliance to change the Constitution, removing Bill of Rights safeguards for property rights. If Julius Malema was a deserter who is in opposition, or competition, to the ANC, then would the ANC have wholeheartedly supported the Bill proposed by EFF President, Julius Malema? Every ANC Member of Parliament voted in support of the EFF’s proposed Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) Bill last year. Many are convinced that the EFF is merely a deception operation, a false-flag, vanguard of the second phase of the Revolution, an integral part of ANC “second phase of transformation” strategy as adopted at the 2012 congress.

Dramatic Loss of Support for the ANC in Every Province

It is also noteworthy that the ANC received more support on the national ballot than in provincial ballots. In every province the ANC received less votes than on the national ticket. Evidently many ANC voters decided to vote for the opposition provincially, perhaps indicating lack of trust in the ANC to actually deliver services on a provincial level. The ANC lost support in every province, most dramatically in KwaZulu Natal where they lost more than 11% of their previous support.

Increased Support for Pro-Life, Pro-Family Parties

Biblical Issues Voters Guides and the www.SAVotersGuide.org website, do seem to have had some good effect as the number of voters voting for pro-life and pro-family parties increased over 300% in the 2019 elections, compared to 2014.

Promising to Help the Poor with Policies Guaranteed to Increase Poverty

Most remarkable is how many parties spoke of wanting to “do more to help the poor”, but advocate socialist economic policies which have always been guaranteed to increase unemployment and aggravate poverty. Following the failed policies of the Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea, Mengistu’s Ethiopia, Castro’s Cuba, Venezuela and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, the ANC and EFF and also many of the other political parties, including some claiming to be Christians, continue to promote and advocate discredited and disastrous socialist policies, guaranteed to devalue the Rand, massively increase unemployment and further extend poverty.

Socialism is Unworkable

Price controls create an unbalanced, chaotic market. Minimum wage laws result in massive unemployment. Profit restrictions increase consumer costs. Enforced economic equality leads to stagnation, destruction of initiative and even more poverty.

A Cover for Corruption

Concern for the poor has long been used as a justification for all sorts of crime and foolish counter-productive economic policies. Judas Iscariot is a prime example of this. In John 12:4-6, we read of Judas rebuking the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive perfume. “Why was this perfume not sold and the money given to the poor?” asked Judas. John’s Gospel comments that Judas was not really concerned for the poor, but he was in charge of the moneybags and he was a thief.

Destruction is the Essence of Socialism

As Ludwig Von Mises observed: “Socialism is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilisation has created. Socialism does not build; it destroys. Destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing. It only consumes what the social order based on private ownership of the means of production has created…” (Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis)

Massive Increase of Unemployment

When commentators observe that the government has “not done enough for the poor” they completely miss the point. The government has done absolutely nothing for the poor, except increase their poverty. They do this by chasing away job creators and investors. In 1994, when Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa, unemployment was over 2 Million. Today, if one includes the “economically inactive” and “discouraged work seekers”, in the official statistics of “unemployed”, one finds that we have more than 30 Million unemployed in 2019. That means that for every year that the ANC has been in power, they have added more than a million more to the ranks of the unemployed. The policies advocated by the vast majority of parties would only aggravate this.

Examples of Excellence

If one really wants to alleviate poverty and increase employment, one needs to follow examples of success, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, by creating tax havens. Bringing taxes way down, in fact, preferably slashing them altogether, is the only way to create full employment. Governments cannot really create jobs, unless they get out of the way. Every government programme requires increased taxation, which chases away the very investors and job-creators that one needs to solve the unemployment crisis. It is an observable fact that the most efficient economies in the world are based on private ownership of property, honest money, free enterprise and a Christian work ethic. None of those components are advocated by the ruling party in this country.

Inflation and Devaluation Steals from Everyone

There was a time when South Africa had one of the strongest currencies in the world. I remember getting more Pounds and Dollars for my Rand, back in the 70’s. When Mandela became president, the Rand was closer to R2 to the Dollar. That deterioration was because of decades of war, sanctions, disinvestments, strikes and riots. Since 1994, with no war, no conscription, no sanctions, or disinvestment, in fact with Foreign Aid, the ANC has so mismanaged and looted this country, that the Rand has plummeted to R15 to the Dollar and R22 to the Pound!

Disastrous Choices

So in effect, the majority of voters in South Africa have chosen more poverty, worse unemployment, further corruption and mismanagement and general failure of the state. “A wise man’s heart is at his right hand, but a fool’s heart at his left.” Ecclesiastes 10:2

Secession Movements Grow

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that there are growing movements for independence of the Western Cape and the Kingdom of Zululand. “Those from among you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.” Isaiah 58:12

Municipal Elections 2021

The next elections in South Africa will be the municipal elections in 2021. “Who will rise up for Me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for Me against the workers of iniquity?” Psalm 94:16

Dr. Peter Hammond

Africa Christian Action

PO Box 23632

Claremont 7735

Cape Town South Africa

Tel: 021-689 4480

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Web: www.christianaction.org.za