As real ones amongst us know, I came down quite sick this week, so you’re only getting two pieces of analysis out of me. Before that, here’s my “which country has this export profile” question of the week! Also, to make things fairer, seeing as you don’t get six guesses and geographic pointers, I’ll compensate you by providing the top export destinations too.
I was correct in expecting the DA would probably go with the ANC. In hindsight, this actually seems likelier than I thought: the Republic has seen a coalition government between the ANC and the “white party” before, although of course those were enormously different circumstances; an ANC-EFF-IFP-PA coalition would have had a much more tenuous majority, being vulnerable to a rebellion from disappointed radicals or alarmed moderates; Ramaphosa’s post-apartheid background is primarily in business, not singing his way into the courts.
This also makes sense as a political strategy. The ANC lie on the centre-left of politics and will surely want to win their way back to the majority they’ve enjoyed for so long. A coalition with the EFF and the resultant policies and posturing over the next half decade would risk driving swing voters over the centre line to the DA, and anybody who over the past decade who ditched the ANC for the EFF surely isn’t going to look at such a coalition government’s work and think “wow, the ANC led this so well, my faith is restored in them”.
If the government gave them radical action after compromising for so long, they’d credit the EFF for change; if they didn’t deliver on radical change, then why reward the governing parties at all? Young lefties are liable to drop out of politics altogether from that feeling of betrayal, and depleting the pool of votes on the left just helps the DA to grow relatively strong and lock you out of a majority.
On the balance of probabilities, the DA or some other incarnation of a centre-right party are likelier to become the alternative party of government to the ANC than the EFF. They’ll need to shed the racial stigma, but if they get around to figuring out “maybe we should bother convincing black voters that a vote for us =/= a return to apartheid economic allocation”, they become an even greater obstacle to ANC majorities. An ANC-DA coalition led by the ANC seems to me likelier to alienate DA voters than ANC voters.
Plenty of white South Africans are susceptible to radical rhetoric about coming racial violence or other fantasies likely to easily disengage them from conventional electoral politics once they become convinced the DA can’t fix everything, which the DA surely can’t as a junior partner in just five years. (I do think conditions in South Africa will get better, but because of the recovery from the post-COVID global hangover, not because of the government.)
The DA hasn't been tested yet under the spotlight of national government, only with the relatively impressive resources of local government in the Cape. The evidence of the past three decades, on the other hand, plainly shows that the ANC is quite good at keeping their voters turning out for them and very good at stopping them from crossing the centre line (unless you want to credit the DA for that too lmao).
The final thing to note about this election is how decoupled the change in voter preferences was from the outcome. The DA didn’t expand their vote share at all, nor did the EFF; the ANC simply lost a third of their vote to a schism on their left wing. This led from a centre-left ANC government to a centrist ANC-DA coalition: voters stepped to the left, and the government stepped to the right. There’s nothing unreasonable about this; a majority of voters chose the ANC and DA collectively, with only a quarter backing MK or the EFF. Nonetheless, it’s a reminder that politics works in funny ways - and if MK wants their project to be validated long term, they have to hope that this coalition is the next political blow the ANC suffers, not an achievement forged out of defeat.
One more thing before you get the answer to the export quiz. I cannot believe I'm giving him credit, because he's very obviously bad for British politics - yes, the SNP are right that the UK should bring in more immigrants ! - and lies to voters who trust him regularly. However, Nigel Farage absolutely destroyed the Tory government (represented by Penny Mourdant, who leads them in the House of Commons) in a UK election debate the other day. Watch the first two minutes here to see the attack.
95% of labels of "x DESTROYS y in debate" are, obviously, moronic, and so much of that is owed to framing and the failure of the defendant. It's not that the attack is effective; it's that it projects strength and an overawed contestant just doesn't have the skills to point out the ineffectiveness of the attack. (And, granted, Mourdant struggles, particularly by throwing to the incomprehensibly daft "annual vote on migration" idea.) This, though, is how it's done. Every point Reform UK could possibly need to make at this election can be found in that clip, and all of it coming directly at the expense of the one party Reform UK are aiming to take votes off of. Ten out of ten, strategically and tactically. Perfectly explains why Nigel Farage has been one of the most influential figures in the UK in the past ten years despite never holding an official role of any importance.
The answer to the export quiz was Guyana! Not to be confused with Spanish Guiana, now part of Venezuela, Dutch Guiana, now neighbouring Suriname, or French Guiana, still part of France but further down the coast. (Guyana was a British colony; just ten percent of people identify with all of Guyana’s different indigenous ethnic groups and twenty percent as multiracial, while thirty percent are of African and forty percent Indian descent from imperial days.) Need a fun geography fact up your sleeve? France’s longest land border with another country is with Brazil, because French Guiana’s border runs longer than metropolitan France’s borders with Spain, France, Italy or any other European country.
Guyana, too, looks deceptively small on a map - they’re almost as big as us, and if you think we’re small, try using www.thetruesize.com to superimpose NZ on Europe. And yet compared to our five million, just eight hundred thousand live there, making Guyana one of the least population-dense countries on Earth. The past half-decade’s explosion of Guyanese oil drilling could mean enormous wealth per person, and the democracy’s formation of a sovereign wealth fund following the model of other equitable petrostates like Norway is encouraging. However, Venezuela has claimed western Guyana for two hundred years, and given the opportunity to expand their oil fields, the dictatorship is now sabre-rattling. Will the Trump administration invade Venezuela? Who knows! Best to be prepared.
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