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Election South Africa ANC Loses?

Phys251 said:
Interesting. The ANC has held a majority for decades. Not all things last forever!
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According to Swedish television it is the young in South Africa that are tired of the corruption.
 
ANC is still the largest party, but lacking a majority they will now have to seek a coalition partner (the opposition parties hate each other so a opposition coalition is not possible). Alot will depend on which opposition party ANC decides to ally with. There are basically three possibilities. One would be to ally with their traditional rival DA (the Democratic Alliance), it would be a stabilizing move, but ANC and DA are quite far from each other on several issues. Another would be to ally with MK ( uMkhonto weSizwe), the party built around former controversial President Jacob Zuma. But that would letting a person many in the ANC despises returning to a position of power. And Zuma has said he'd never support another term for President Ramaphosa. Of course the worst case scenario is an alliance with the radical EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) of Julius Malema.
 
It's worse for the DA to be in power.

Democratic Alliance (South Africa) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The party draws its support predominantly from Afrikaans and English-speaking people, people aged over 35, and white people, as well as the Indian and Coloured communities.[15][better source needed]
Also see:

Yet in a country with a painful history of codified racism - apartheid - where white South Africans make up just 7% of the population, the DA is struggling to shake off an image as a party of rich whites and prove it reflects the make-up and aspirations of all.
For political analyst Melanie Verwoerd, the problem is as much ideological as racial.
Steenhuisen, a champion of economic liberalism, has vowed to end a racial quota system for employers established by the ANC to redress decades of apartheid discrimination and wants to loosen labour laws.

And, in a country of 62 million people where 24 million survive on welfare, he is pushing for a smaller role for government.
"I don't believe that they set out to be a party of white privilege," said Verwoerd. "But they end up being that."
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It doesn't even represent the majority in South Africa.

They sound like they were at least partial enablers for apartheid from what I read.

The world would be better off without them in existence as a party, the ANC are totally corrupt but this lot seem even worse.
 
Borg Refinery said:
It's worse for the DA to be in power.

Democratic Alliance (South Africa) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The party draws its support predominantly from Afrikaans and English-speaking people, people aged over 35, and white people, as well as the Indian and Coloured communities.[15][better source needed]
Also see:



It doesn't even represent the majority in South Africa.

They sound like they were at least partial enablers for apartheid from what I read.

The world would be better off without them in existence as a party, the ANC are totally corrupt but this lot seem even worse.
Click to expand...
The Democratic Alliance has it's roots in the legal opposition during Apartheid. It was the whites that opposed the Apartheid system that formed the party. This of course still comes with baggage. Unlike other movements the DA was a white organization that unlike other anti- Apartheid movements was legal. Furthermore when Apartheid ended most whites started to support DA, even those that had been backers of Apartheid. It thus had a very negative reputation among blacks, and indeed continued to be the party for the Whites, the Colored and the Indians, i.e. the often quite well off minorities. But associating peolple like legendary DA leader Helen Zille with Apartheid is just wrong.

Another thing to take into consideration is just how racial South African politics is. DA might not be appealing to blacks, but the ANC is a party that is for blacks, meaning non- blacks are usually not even allowed past the door. The same goes for the parties that are splinters of ANC. DA is politically liberal center- right, as in liberal in social questions and generally pro market.

With ANC not having a parliamentary majority they have to pick someone to ally with. And while an alliance with DA would policy wise be a challenge, it would be the most stabilizing thing they could do. Since their other options are letting Zuma come back into the limelight, or ally with Malema, which really is worst case scenario.
 
The party's existence under apartheid in various different forms (the various 'progressive parties') was undoubtedly a good thing that helped end apartheid - and Zille seems to have been a good anti-apartheid activist, but in today's age this modern version of the party seem antiquated and like they need significant reform given their policies, which, from what I read in the Reuters link and elsewhere, seem to be more or less bad for the country and seem to sound borderline racist against the majority.

And I don't mean just because they are centre-right, because that can be forgiven, it's because they still seem to draw their support from others except the country's majority - and do things to disfavour the country's majority.

The ANC allying with Marxist-Leninists in that far left party would be bad for us here in the West, because it would mean a pivot towards the likes of Russia and China, it would ultimately be bad for South Africa too because they'd probably get ripped off by those countries, but then they get ripped off by the West and America too don't they? Who knows what they should do - I won't lecture them on what's best for them because I do not honestly know which way is best.

I know that if DA wants to do good for people in SA, they should drop a lot of their policies and I think that's a reasonable and fair position to take, it's not extremist in the slightest to suggest such. That doesn't mean I want the corrupt ANC to be in power in perpetuity nor the Marxist-Leninist lot in any sort of coalition.

If you have a coalition of the ANC and DA, you might just get the worst of both party's corruption and racial politics, without any of the upsides.

What it all comes down to, as in the UK, America and everywhere else, is that they deserve far better representation and far better parties that actually represent them and do their best for the people of the country....
 
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