South Africa

Three decades of ANC rule in South Africa look set to end. The final votes from Wednesday’s election have yet to be counted and are expected to be announced on Sunday. But the general consensus is that the party that ended apartheid will garner about 45 percent of the vote. Which means it is coalition time.

The downfall of the ANC vote is evidence of the well-worn political truism that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In 2004 the African National Congress won 70 percent of the vote. It dropped to 57 percent in 2019 and is projected to drop between 10 and 15 points in this election.

The reason for the collapse of the ANC vote is corruption, poor governance and economic mismanagement leading to a flight of capital and an unemployment rate of 37 percent.

Corruption reached its peak under the presidency of Jacob Zuma whose misuse of government funds led to his ousting in 2018. In 2020 he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for contempt of court. He served only three, but he is still barred from serving in parliament.

Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, made some progress towards resolving the corruption problem, but it was too little too late> Unemployment – especially among the urban youth – remains troublingly high. Zuma, in the meantime has emerged as leader of a new KwaZulu Natal-based political party, Umkhonto we Size (MK) or Spear of the Nation.

MK has surprised political pundits by beating the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to take third place in the polls. Both the EFF and MK have adopted radical agendas which include the expropriation of white-owned land and widespread nationalisation. MK also wants to return more political power to the traditional trial chieftains.

MK took votes away from both the ANC and EFF. Another winner from this week’s was the Democratic Alliance (DA) who appear to have won the confidence the white South African voter. A fifth party is the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is—like MK– also based in Natal. The most likely coalition is between the IFP, Democratic Alliance and ANC.

Europe

Europe’s far-right parties appear set to sweep the boards in European Parliament elections held on 6-9 June.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are on the rise. Marine Le Pen is current favourite to win the 2027 and her National Rally party is currently at 30 percent in the opinion polls. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz has a stranglehold on Hungary and Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom won elections in the Netherlands. Far-right parties, in Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, Sweden and Austria are growing or having a stake in government.

There is, however, a chink, in the far-right armour: Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (Afd) has swung too far to the right even for Europe’s far-right. Recently, there top candidate for the European Parliament, Maximilian Krah, said that members of the wartime SS were not automatically “criminals.” Krah is also being investigated by the police for accepting payments from China and Russia. His problems followed a secret meeting in a hotel outside Berlin where senior officials in the AfD discussed the mass deportation of non-ethnic Germans, including German citizens.