Africa-Press – South-Africa. A new poll suggests the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) political party backed by former president Jacob Zuma could reduce the ANC’s electoral support in KwaZulu-Natal in half in the 2024 national and provincial elections.
The survey by public policy think-tank Social Research Foundation (SRF), which interviewed 820 people in KwaZulu-Natal between January 31 and February 7, shows the MK party could attract half the governing party’s support in KwaZulu-Natal, one the ANC’s biggest provinces.
At 5.7-million, KwaZulu-Natal has the second-highest number of registered voters after Gauteng.
According to the poll, in the case of a 66% turnout, the MK party could pick up 24% of votes in KwaZulu-Natal, while the ANC is projected to garner 25%, the DA 15%, the IFP 24%, the EFF 5% and others 6%.
The study has a 5% margin of error.
This could be a huge blow for the governing party. In the 2019 general election, the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal received 1.9-million votes (54.2%) down from the 2.4-million votes (64.5%) it mustered in the 2014 national election.
The latest SRF survey is in line with several other polls, including those by Standard Bank, Ipsos, Wits University, and the Brenthurst Foundation, which have all suggested the ANC’s electoral support could fall below 50% for the first time since 1994.
The ANC is dogged by a slew of governance, financial, operational and administrative challenges, which resulted in it losing Gauteng’s three metros to the opposition in the 2021 municipal elections.
Speaking to Business Day on Tuesday, SRF associate Gabriel Makin explained the results.“The more useful numbers are probably the provincial numbers. It’s unlikely that the ANC will fall as low as 16%, the reason stuff like that happens is that this is quite a small sample size. When working with data like that we go for the most conservative estimates, as they are the safer ones,” Makin said.
“The EFF, in the national ballot receives 20% and 5% in the province. We are not too certain why that occurred, we don’t think there will be that big a difference between national and province, it’s most likely there is some degree to which support for the EFF is stronger at national level because of the Julius Malema factor, and him being the cult of personality that the EFF has created around him,” said Makin.
Asked about the poll’s objective, Makin said: “We wanted to get an understanding of whether the MK party has significant legs for an election campaign in KZN given that it’s Zuma’s province.”
Zuma, who was suspended by the ANC in January for supporting the MK party, has been a thorn in the side of President Cyril Ramaphosa, who forced him to resign as the country’s president in 2018 after almost a decade at the helm amid almost daily revelations of widespread state corruption that hobbled the economy and spawned the term “state capture” in SA.
The 81-year-old, who has the right to appeal against the unanimous decision by the 87-member national executive committee, has joined and campaigned for the newly formed MK party, named after the ANC’s now-defunct military wing, which was disbanded after SA’s liberation struggle. Since Zuma denounced the ANC in December 2023, he has been holding mass rallies in KwaZulu-Natal and other parts of the country to garner support for the MK party.
Analysts have previously suggested Zuma’s exit from the ANC after 64 years could have significant implications for the governing party’s electoral support in KwaZulu-Natal, where the former statesman enjoys a loyal base of supporters.
It could also deepen divisions within the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal, where three councillors in eThekwini were suspended for defecting to MK.
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