Will 2024 SA Elections Further Fragment the Opposition Vote?

This Election of 2024 is already resembling a wild bar fist fight where everybody is swinging hard blows at each other with no one knowing who hit them or whom they are hitting.

Wisdom tells me that the ANC will win it again because all of a sudden from out of the blue 10 new parties have popped up and are going to muddy the normally predictable waters even more. The opposition vote with its moon-shot pact or landing, are in trouble. They have done some seriously simplistic projections and are of the view they will win based on those unrealistic assumptions. If u ask me, it’s best for anew movement to let this war of attrition that’s light on policy play itself out. You cannot predict an outcome based on your own baseless assumptions. There is scientific link between the amount of free t-shirts you give out and the votes you can expect. People are thinking of winter pyjamas.

Leaders of the Opposition to the Opposition

Then you have the EFF whose leader says he is “not desperate” to be President of SA. One can be mistaken for thinking he is running a campaign where all the people of SADC will be voting since he has some seriously flawed views on the open borders he wants for SA. I don’t know when you people as a nation were desperate and begged him to run for President but you need to let him know that his campaign messaging is shoddy and off point. If he doesn’t wanna be the Prezz, what is he doing on the ballot paper?

One of the green brigade’s leaders spent an hour swearing white people telling them “I don’t need anything” from you before he used their meeting and microphones to blast the same folk he swore he didn’t need anything from. Policy wise, nobody was home. It was all bluster, poise and pretence; strongman language at play wasting a grand opportunity to make friends and grow influence. President of a Township somewhere probably would work but here in the vast big developed world, more tack and skill is needed beyond sloganeering and showing tin-pot dictatorship tendencies.

I can’t help but feel like Herman is running a Municipal election campaign in a national general election. He is talking about pavements, toilets, hi-jacked buildings in an election which is at the national and global level agenda. Sometimes I feel like he is still stuck in Black Like Me mode, swotting problems aside as if he is dealing with stubborn s-curls on a non-cooperative wet look perm. Herman, you are running for head honcho of the land; step up the campaign debates boss. Talk about the oil discovered the other day, about our skelm former defence force minister who uses wigs for purposes other than those intended by the makers. This hair saloon style of micro and nano perspectives is making us think you are councillor material and nothing more.

John Steenhuisen is chained to his normal pesky and pernicious contributions to debates. But you can see that he needs Aunty Helen’s approval before he makes any move. How he will win any election at THIS level with such an elementary grasp of these complexities beats me but what do I know. He got this far by knowing the little about lots he still knows.

Parties that cannot ACT nor RISE to the Occasion

Ace Magashule’s ACT party is in full spectator mode, they are rooted to the substitute bench watching the game gain steam whilst not knowing exactly where and with whom they stand or sit.  They are prolly too angry with the ANC for red carding them and Carl Niehaus bringing their gravy train experience to a sudden halt. Are they even on the ballot box?

Then you have that smiling guy on the RISE SA posters who thought it too much trouble to add his name on the posters so nobody knows what he is called. He looks like a hesitant participant in the whole election circus, smiling as if he had something else on his mind when the cameraman shouted “Cheese!” They apparently got R15 million from Mrs Oppenheimer who is making her debut in trying to get agreeable blacks into office. Dunno how high this lot will rise but nice posters and R15 million from the Oppenheimers won’t be enough to head for the Union Building.
They need to buff up the beef….

Corné Mulder seems to have learnt a trick or two from his late dad’s mistakes; he got the whole brown skinned lot of Afrikaners like Peter Marais in his movement’ unlike his father who thought the same people were just ‘hotnots who wanted a dop’. He will maintain those whites whom he scared so much last election they ran from the DA at top speed because there were too many clever blacks there.

The Neither Here Nor There Parties

The mystery man of these elections is none other than Jacob Zuma, who formed a new party named after the military wing of his old party which he is still a “loyal and not so disciplined member” of. I don’t know how that works or which part of it can’t be done Mr Zuma does not understand, but in his world he can be a member of A, help C and get elected on the ticket of G whilst remaining a member of them all. It’s what they teach in that standard he left school in. His movement will siphon votes off the EFF since its own leader has gone AWOL and is busy campaigning for even more rights for illegal foreigners who don’t vote in this plebiscite. You have to give it to Zuma; he chose the perfect time to inject some drama and chaos into what was looking like a boring campaign season.

Mmusi, Inkatha, Fransman, and all the other party heads are all out there making outlandish promises whilst hoping for more luck. But the old lion the ANC is not yet ready to roll over and die. The votes that these new parties will grab are not from its share so we are headed for lotsa parties with a whole lot lesser votes but an ANC which will hold on to its majority by its corruption stained finger-tips. ANC voters’ loyalty to the ANC has not yet hit expiry date. This is its last performance.

That is why I am of the view that [for me] taking part in this jamboree is of little value now. It’s simply going to fragment the opposition vote even further, placing victory out of reach for their moonlight pact.

Kenni Gambo is an Author with 5 Published Books, a Marketing Guru, a Political Pundit, Radio Personality as well as a successful Musician & Songwriter. Originally from District 6 in Cape Town and having lived in different parts of SA as well as Zimbabwe, Kenni Gambo has his fingers firmly on the pulse of Cosmopolitan South Africa. A member of Bruinou.com since the early 2000’s, Kenni also runs his own Social Website Koolooma.com.