Costly: The MK party brought out its latest acquisition, Floyd Shivambu, but voters didn’t make an X. Photo: Luba Lesolle/Getty Images
Thursday.
There appears to be an element of buyer’s remorse on the part of many of the voters down here in the Kingdom who made their X next to Jacob Zuma’s head on 29 May, if the results of yesterday’s by-elections are anything to go by.
The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party took only one of the 23 wards that were up for grabs in the 14 municipalities around South Africa where by-elections were held to replace the councillors who moved further up the political feeding chain after the general elections.
Nxamalala’s party scooped ward 14 in the Ray Nkonyeni municipality on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, unseating the ANC, which has held the ward for decades.
But elsewhere in the Kingdom all the contested wards were retained by the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Democratic Alliance (DA), while the MK party’s share of the vote dropped dramatically from its first outing at the polls.
The MK party may have taken 45% of the KwaZulu-Natal vote in May, but its voters appear to have either stayed at home — or voted for somebody else — in Wednesday’s by-elections in the province.
In ward 33, where I live, the MK party wiped out the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on 29 May, when it took 26.35% of the vote, placing it third after the DA and the ANC.
It saw a gap — the DA dropped to 39% in the ward in May — so the MK party brought in its marquee signing of the political transfer window, Floyd Shivambu, to try to win the ward where his old party’s provincial headquarters are based.
Floyd was all over the ward — and social media — before the by-election voting day, talking up MK’s plan to win control of Umbilo, Glenwood and Bulwer, and to swallow up the smallanyana parties to the “left” of the ANC and take over Mzansi.
If Floyd was to be believed, ward 33 was a done deal, a shoo-in for the MK party in an area where the DA was failing and the ANC was dead.
Floyd was right about the ANC bit — it dropped from 28% in May to 4% yesterday — but the MK party lost half of the votes it took in the ward. The DA doubled its vote, which may be where the ANC’s support migrated to. The MK party’s big-money signing appears to have been a bit of a dud, electorally speaking.
Not the result Shivambu would have hoped for on his first outing in the municipal league as the MK party’s national organiser.
Or Zuma, for that matter.
One wonders whether the old man too — like the voters in the Kingdom — is having buyer’s remorse over his shiny new national organiser, or the other signings he has made since the votes were counted.
The political punters may have been queuing up to jump aboard the Zuma bandwagon since the final results were announced, but the party’s new acquisitions seem to have cost it votes, rather than delivering their constituents to Nxamalala.
uBaba will have been wanting a result from the high-profile playmates he had brought in as MPs and parliamentary leaders since the May elections, unless they’re just there for decoration.
But if they were brought in to number the numbers further, rather than delivering a drop in the voter share, uBaba can’t be pleased.
Neither can the MK rank and file — the people who actually campaigned and voted for the party ahead of the May elections — only for the celebrities to be brought in at their expense in parliament and the provincial legislatures.
Is the party already paying the price?
There also appear to be buyer’s remorse vibes there by the government of national unity (GNU), where the DA contingent seems to have suddenly realised that they will spend the next five years implementing ANC policy.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has been calling the manager over President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to sign the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill on Friday, something he has known his new boss was going to do since before the elections.
The rest of the GNU partners appear to have no drama with the contents of the Bill — or they’re keeping quiet about them — so it’s left to the DA to put up a public fight, or at least the appearance of one.
Unless there is a legal intervention, the DA’s Siviwe Gwarube, the basic education minister, will be the one left to ensure that the Bill it has opposed since its inception becomes part of government policy.
Not what the DA signed on for, but the reality it will have to live with for the next half decade.