Power failure: South Africa’s ANC stumbles

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Patrick Lane, filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Italy was battered in the early days of the pandemic. Lately, it's been enjoying an economic recovery as well as sporting success. But the prime minister, Mario Draghi, still has his work cut out and he has his eye on even higher office. As a conservative Muslim country, Bangladesh may not be the first place you'd associate with a booming party scene. But the beat is throbbing more loudly. We take the pulse of its thriving but secret nightlife. But first.

Today is a day like no other before it. Voting in our first free and fair election has begun. Today marks the dawn of our freedom.

It's 27 years since the party of Nelson Mandela came to power in South Africa. The African National Congress, or anc, has ruled without interruption ever since. But this week has seen signs that its dominance of the country's politics may be drawing to an end. South Africans have been voting in their local elections and the initial results make worrying reading for the ANC and its supporters.

It's shaping up to be historic week in South Africa. With about half of the votes counted in local elections, the African National Congress is set to win less than 50% for the first time in the Democratic era.

John McDermott is our chief Africa correspondent and is based in Johannesburg.

And ahead of the vote here in Johannesburg, it seemed that that was possible. There are relatively few ANC posters around. Their rallies were sparsely attended. But nevertheless, the fact that it is now happening, that they've now dropped below 50%, is still a momentous event in the contemporary history of South Africa.

John, why has the ANC done so badly?

If you look at the voting trends, at least what we know so far, there are a couple of reasons. The first is that the people who might be likely to vote for it, that is the 80% of South Africans who are black, were more likely to stay at home than the 20% of South Africans who are minorities. So there's a turnout issue. And the second reason is that the black South Africans who did turn up to vote were more likely than before to vote for somebody else.

And among those who did go to the polling station, what were they voting on?

So while South Africans voting patterns do tend to fall along identity lines, black voters historically opt for the anc. Non black voters historically opt for a party that is not. The ancient voters in South Africa are not that different to voters anywhere else. They vote on material issues as well. And for so many people in this country, life has simply not gotten better under the ruling party, at least for the past decade or so. Polls regularly show that jobs are the most important issue, which is no surprise in a country where more than a third of the labor force is unemployed. Real GDP per capita is lower than it was 15 years ago. Food prices are around 10% higher than a year ago. And on and on and on. And while some of these problems have been made worse by Covid, frankly, the ANC has not been making the lot of the average South African better for quite some time. And as a result, they were punished.

So it sounds as if the ANC's been riding for a fall for a little while. How might they react to this bad result at the polls?

For President Cyril Ramaphosa, these results are a clear sign that his national majority may be under threat at the general election in 2024. He and his party should conclude that it just needs to do much more to improve the lives of ordinary South Africans. It needs to fix the power cuts which may interrupt this recording. It needs to get the state out of the way to help the economy, create jobs. It needs to improve public services by appointing people based on merit, not party fail, and on and on and on. But the ANC has been ignoring the need for reform for many years now. So it would be surprising if it suddenly had a Damascene moment and became more reformist and pragmatic. It's entirely possible that the party now sees these results and decides to take on Mr. Ramaphosa, despite the fact that polls clearly show he is more popular than his party is. So it's going to be a rocky few years for Mr. Ramaphosa and for the ANC. And sadly, I would be surprised if these results spurred serious action to make life better for most South Africans.

So if the ANC's dominance is in decline after so many years, what could replace it?

I think what you're going to see instead of ANC dominance is a very fragmented picture. One would think that the official opposition party, the Democratic alliance, would have benefited more from the failures of the ANC. And while it maintained its support of roughly 20% of the vote, we think it still struggles to pick up support among the black majority. And it actually lost a bit of support among some of its core minority votes, Afrikaans speaking people, whites and mixed race South Africans. So it seems unlikely, at least at the moment, that the DA is going to become anything other than a party that wins the majority of minorities. Meanwhile, you're going to see smaller parties getting bigger. In KwaZulu Natal, the province dominated by South Africa's largest ethnic group, Zulus, the Inkatha Freedom Party did well. It's an ethnic nationalist party and you've got populists on both the left and the right picking up support. And I think what all this adds up to is a weakness of the centre of South African politics.

So what are the immediate implications of these elections?

Remember, these are local elections, so it's not about who governs South Africa as a whole. It's about the 200 plus towns and cities that were up for grabs this time around. And what we see now is that in most big cities outside of Cape Town, you're going to need coalition governments. Some of that was true already, but now it's even more so. And the question is, what do these coalitions look like? In some cases they may be alliances between the two biggest parties, the ANC and the da. But in some cases it could involve some of these populist or identity based parties making up the numbers. Ultimately it will depend on the mathematics and it could be quite a mixed picture across the country. But the key thing to remember is that local elections are glimpses into the future in South Africa. So as the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg and Durban go, so might the nation after 2024.

So are the politics of South Africa changing irrevocably?

The ANC has long seen itself as this exceptional entity born of its role in taking down apartheid. But for me, these results are a reminder that ultimately it is just another political party. And if it fails voters, then they will stop voting for it. You're seeing across Southern Africa opposition parties doing quite well. In Malawi and Zambia over the past two years, opposition parties have toppled rotten incumbent governments. And there should be no reason why that is not also going to be the case one day in South Africa. For all, it has bestrode the political scene like a colossus. It seems to me clear that the end of the era of ANC dominance is coming close.

John, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Patrick.

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In the past six months, Italians have had plenty to cheer about. In May, they won the Eurovision Song Contest. In July their footballers became European champions. And at the Tokyo Olympics, their sprinters astonished the sporting world. And to that, a strong economic recovery. And there's something of a feel good factor. But Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi knows that if the country's good economic fortune is to last, he has his work cut out.

Italy's economic rebound has been good, but there are a number of structural issues that are going to need addressing.

John Hooper is the Economist's Italy and Vatican correspondent, not least whether Prime Minister.

Mario Draghi wants to run to be president.

So John, give us a sense of how Italy's economy has fared. The country was badly hit, as I recall by COVID 19 early in the pandemic. But how are things looking at the moment?

It was indeed badly hit and since then we've seen first of all a big dip in output as a result of the pandemic, but now a remarkably swift recovery helped by a successful vaccine rollout. The government at the moment is saying that they expect growth of well over 6% this year, though Italy is probably not going to recover its pre pandemic level until sometime in the new year. So that's after countries like the US and the uk. Italians also can look forward now to their government being able to spend liberally for pretty much the first time since the end of World War II and the Marshall Plan.

Well, where's that money going to come from and what will it be spent.

On the money is going to come from the EU's post pandemic recovery Plan, and it's due to receive the largest single amount, 1 91.5 billion in grants and loans just from the core Recovery plan fund. Now, that's going to make a big difference to a country that has had an economy that's been barely growing since the turn of the century. It grew less than 4% from the year 2000 up until the year before the pandemic 2019, much less than other big European economies like France and Germany.

That all sounds very promising, unusually promising. What's the downside?

Well, the problem is that this money, while it is a very big carrot, comes with a very big stick. There are strings attached by the Commission in Brussels. And to give you an idea, just to get the next tranche of money, Italy is going to have to fulfill no less than 51 conditions, reforms and investments. The reforms are going pretty well, but the big problem has so far been investment. And there are areas like tourism and what's known here as ecological transition. In those areas, the investments are well behind schedule.

And are these problems something that it's within Mario Draghi's power to fix?

Well, there are two things here. One of them is the question of implementation. What happens to legislation on reform and investment once, if you like, it leaves Rome? Italy lacks in its public administration project management skills, for example. And there's a danger that, as in the past, the intention of the policy could become twisted as the legislation filters down through the various levels of government. The other issue is Mr. Blagie himself. He inspires confidence. He has so far made a good fist of ensuring implementation of legislation. But he would like to become president, and that job comes up for grabs at the beginning of next year. So he may not be around for for very long. Even if he doesn't become head of state, then a general election is due by 2023.

Is it likely, do you think, that he will run for the presidency?

It's certainly something that he is said to want, but then it's really anybody's guess. He has used the skills of a central banker to remain absolutely sphinx like about whether he will take the very top job. And there is the problem that of course he has to get a majority in parliament behind him in order to get that job, and that's not guaranteed. The build up to a presidential election can often be Byzantine, even by the standards of Italian politics. And really anything can happen and anyone can come out of that procedure as.

The new president well before he takes that potential step towards the presidency. How do you assess his time so far as prime minister?

I think that he gets a good score sheet in the circumstances, and the circumstances, of course, have been a pandemic. He will take a lot of credit for for having reacted effectively to that with an effective vaccination project, but it has probably distracted him from doing a lot of what he would otherwise wanted to have done. An awful lot is going to depend on what happens later and specifically whether future governments are going to be tied in to doing the kind of reforms that, frankly, Italy badly needs.

John, thank you very much for joining us.

My pleasure.

Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, isn't really known for its nightlife. The country is mostly Muslim. Alcohol is illegal and mixed sex parties are generally frowned upon. Those who are looking for a dance have become well practiced at partying in secret, though. More and more Bangladesh's ravers are becoming bolder.

In some ways. Bangladesh has become more conservative in the last few years, but at the same time, the nightlife has really taken off, especially in Dhaka.

Susanna Savage is the Economist's Bangladesh correspondent.

I think this is because of many factors, but one of the main ones would be social media. This has exposed young, especially urban Bangladeshis to a stream of liberal ideas coming in from other places, but also a stream of different types of music from other parts of the the world.

Like.

Techno, house, trance and hip hop from North America and Europe, Afrobeats from West Africa and African diasporas around the world, and K pop from South Korea.

And who is it that's availing themselves of all this international music?

Well, you have the elite in Dhaka and they've always been exposed to transnational ideas and music because they've had the ability to travel and wealth that gives them the sort of privilege to lead a more freer social life. But they're now joined by a burgeoning middle class and particularly the younger elements of that who are quite rebellious and sort of bucking this conservative trend.

So where do their big nights take place?

It's a bit of a mixed bag. So there are clubs for expats that serve alcohol and play music. But often locals have restricted access. They're rarely allowed in. Then there are other establishments which operate under differing degrees of legality. A lot of these are barred to women or they just wouldn't be very comfortable for women to go to. This means that dacoretes have to be.

Quite resourceful so they don't get caught doing things that they're not supposed to do.

Yes, it's quite logistically challenging to organise these sorts of events because they have to dodge police, but also local people who might frown upon partying or loud music, especially foreign music. So to get around this, they organize events in a different location each time. Interestingly, all this secrecy sort of helps with illegal drinking and sometimes illegal drug taking, but it also makes Dhaka's night scene one of the few safe spaces for queer Bangladeshis, because in Bangladesh, homosexual acts are illegal and also very taboo.

And how much has the pandemic affected all of this?

Covid has had a big impact on secret clubbing, like elsewhere. Mainly this is because of lockdowns that have been imposed, although they've been very poorly observed. The pandemic has also disrupted the flows of alcohol into the country because these come from abroad and driven up the prices of booze and also of party drugs. And police have taken the opportunity to crack down on narcotics, which has threatened this supply as well. But having said that, people have been very resourceful and they've moved into their houses to organize gigs and they've moved out into the. The countryside, and so partying has definitely carried on.

How do you see the scene shaping up over the long term?

Long term, I think the demand for nightlife in Bangladesh, especially in Dhaka, is going to be driven by changing music tastes. Electronic dance music remains largely underground, but other genres are definitely moving into the mainstream and kind of gaining a Bangladeshi flavour. So I think if this kind of music becomes more normalized, then after dark, dancing will follow behind that.

Susanna, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@examiner.com intelligenceoffer. See you back here tomorrow.