There are several pointers to this. There has been a curious inversion of election strategies, with the DA running a positive campaign emphasising its successful record as a governing party in Cape Town, the Western Cape and other municipalities it controls. Gone is the old, negative "fight-back" campaign strategy of the Tony Leon era. Now the ANC is running the negative campaign, focusing on denigrating the DA's performances and launching personal attacks on its leaders - sounding almost like an opposition party belittling a government's record.

Now it is DA leader Helen Zille doing the dancing and Jacob Zuma sounding like the desperate alternative.

But style and personalities aside, it is the sheer aridness of the ANC's policy offerings that expose its state of decline. After zillions of draft documents, which is one area of prolific ANC productivity, it has nothing to offer for the dire problems facing local government. Municipalities are seriously underfunded. During apartheid, our towns and cities were funded primarily by revenue from the high- rated central business districts (CBDs), while central government, through the old department of Bantu administration and development, was responsible for the huge black townships. Today, those townships, needing massive upgrading, have been incorporated into the metro-cities so they become the responsibility of the town and city councils, but still with only the same old CBD rates bases as the councils' sources of revenue.

No wonder they can't cope - particularly when their inadequate revenues are being further depleted by corruption, tenderpreneurship and appalling wastage.

Which is why our towns and cities are sinking into disrepair and squalor. Yet the ANC has presented no policy ideas on how to fix the revenue problem or stem the wastage. All it does is promise to do better if re-elected, without saying how. In fact, this has become an astonishing blank-cheque election. With the exception of Cape Town, the ANC has not nominated any mayors for election. People are being asked to vote for nameless figures to run the towns and cities that are so vital to their day-to-day lives. In the same vein, because of unhappiness over candidate selections, the ANC is reserving the right to withdraw ward councillors and substitute others after the election. In other words it is saying to the electorate: "Vote for us and we'll tell you afterwards who you've actually voted for." Pay now and we'll decide what you've bought later.

Or, in a special Zuma variation, vote for us and get your reward in the afterlife. Nor will all this pre-election turmoil end on polling day. A post-election mess awaits as elected councillors are withdrawn and wannabe mayors are bypassed. And it will continue into next year's ANC national conference in Mangaung, which is already being dubbed Polokwane 2. Be assured that if the ANC loses ground in these elections, as I expect, with a significant number of councillors losing those jobs that determine whether they remain part of the middle class with good salaries, perks and tenderpreneur opportunities, or sink into the underclass, there will be a backlash against Zuma. He will be blamed for the painful fall in lifestyles, so the losers will go back to their branches and plot their revenge at Mangaung next year.

Thus, a luta continua within the ANC. Which is why I foresee its continued decline, leading to the gradual reconfiguration of our political landscape. How will this take shape? Time will tell. At this point all I am prepared to say is that political line-ups usually take shape around natural constituencies. Charismatic leaders obviously have an effect on what happens, but they, in turn, tend to mobilise around constituencies, which they see taking shape within society.

Identifying what constituencies we have, or which one can see emerging as our social landscape changes, therefore becomes the starting point in trying to anticipate what might happen.

We obviously have racial and ethnic, or what might be called identity, constituencies in our society. These will continue to have an influence, but I suggest they are likely to diminish in importance.

Meanwhile, we have new class constituencies emerging, which are overlaying, though not replacing, the identity constituencies. We all have multiple identities anyway, and these are sometimes in conflict. So the boundaries are not clear. But one can certainly see a multiracial middle class emerging, while there is already a clearly definable and predominantly black working class, as well as a large black underclass.

So we are looking at three identifiable constituencies, whose interests are not always compatible even though there may be shared identities. It is along those fault lines that political partings may begin - indeed have already begun - to emerge. That is the process that is likely to continue. I foresee the ANC and DA competing increasingly for the middle class, which is growing rapidly as it includes more and more of the educated youth for whom the liberation struggle is increasingly something they only learn about in school. This contest could see a shift in focus by the ANC that is likely to aggravate the working class to the point at which the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leaves the ANC-led alliance to form a socialist party that can appeal more directly to its members' interests.

That leaves the underclass, somewhere between 25% and 40% of the population. As Zuma once noted in an unguarded moment, this is the constituency nobody represents. Certainly not Cosatu, whose rigidity on the issue of labour regulations is what is keeping the unemployed, especially the poorly educated youth, out of work. Ironically, I suspect this is the ANC's strongest support group, because although it is overlooked in all policy planning, its members are dependent on social welfare payments for their survival and thus beholden to the government. But as electoral competition hots up, somebody will turn to this neglected group, for they will hold the key to power. That is when our democracy will reach full maturity, when all parties will become accountable to the electorate and not just to party bosses who want to appoint your representatives after you have voted.

* Sparks is a veteran journalist and political analyst.

Return