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DA supporters. Picture: IHSAAN HAFFAJEE/REUTERS
DA supporters. Picture: IHSAAN HAFFAJEE/REUTERS

Do political parties choose their own programmes? Or do powerful forces beyond their control choose their programmes for them?

I am thinking of the government of national unity (GNU). There is a case to be made that the roles the ANC and DA are beginning to play are shaped by currents not quite within their grasp. 

The strongest of these is inequality. It is the most salient feature of SA and has a hand in shaping pretty much everything. In democracies as unequal as SA’s it is an ironlike law that those who can afford to will at some point bail out of public services and acquire it privately. This syndrome does a lot to shape a country’s politics. 

Healthcare and policing are the most obvious cases; middle-class SA has private medical insurance and is signed up to private security. Millions of people have also escaped the worst of state-run education, for even when their children attend state schools they pay for a quality of education the poor cannot afford. 

Middle-class flight from poor public services makes those services even worse. For without the voice and influence of the privileged, and without the resources they invest, public services are left with weak consumers who cannot apply effective pressure. 

Interlaced with its other divisions, the country is thus divided between those who can pay for good healthcare, quality education and effective security, and those at the mercy of a dysfunctional public sector. 

This basic feature of SA may shape the future of the DA. Thus far, its most visible role in the GNU has been to protect various overlapping constituencies that acquire essential services on the market. In the GNU’s short history the two largest sources of tension have been the future of private healthcare and the control of Afrikaans-speaking parents over their children’s schools. This is after just a few months; there will surely be more of the same. 

The DA is locked into this role. It is what matters most to many of those who vote for it, and if the party doesn’t protect them they will take their votes elsewhere. That doesn’t mean the DA can’t expand its black support base, for millions of black people procure private services. Nor does getting the support of the middle classes preclude the party from getting support from poorer people. But successfully branding across race and class is difficult, and when push comes to shove parties often have to make choices. 

What of the ANC? In the 1990s and 2000s it got a lot of support from both sides of the public-private services divide. But it has been bleeding black middle classes’ support for more than a decade. And while it is still overwhelmingly the biggest party among those at the mercy of public services, voter participation among the poor has plummeted. 

One senses that the ANC isn’t quite sure what story to tell the electorate. The middle classes of all races fear that it will meddle with the services they buy on the market. And among those forced to rely on the public sector, few believe it has the will to fix healthcare, policing or education. The party’s most valuable brand, its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, is also soon heading off into the sunset. 

Here is a prospective danger. What If the ANC continues to wither, its support base getting ever smaller? And what if the DA is increasingly seen as the party that protects the private services of the middle classes? What will the rest of the electorate do in this scenario? The very structure of the situation is primed to produce populist anger. 

SA’s politics desperately needs realignment. The country requires parties that can garner votes across race and class, and across consumers of public and private services. The only party that might conceivably do this in the next decade is the DA. Much about the future of SA’s politics hinges on how adroitly one particular party manages the daunting tasks that face it. 

• Steinberg teaches at Yale University’s Council on African Studies.

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