No matter what ANC fails to do, it remains electorally powerful

Corruption and societal collapse have reduced South Africans to the kind of passivity often seen in abusive domestic relationships.

The victim is painfully aware of the costs of remaining but cannot conceive an existence beyond the living hell they’re in.

The Institute of Race Relations has just released a poll showing that Cyril Ramaphosa – despite three years of meandering leadership – is still by a mighty margin the most popular political leader in the country.

While barely half (50.3%) of the respondents would vote for the ANC, 62% had a favourable, or somewhat favourable, view of Ramaphosa.

In contrast, Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen rates a dismal 11.3%, just over half of the 20.5% who would vote for his party.

What must be worrying for the country’s official opposition is that almost 46% of respondents were unfamiliar with his name.

Part of the problem is Steenhuisen himself. Belying his impressive performances in the parliamentary debating chamber, he has a lacklustre public persona that has not been burnished by a prickly ego that causes him to overreact to any and every perceived slight.

Nor does it help that he remains in the shadow of former party leader Helen Zille, who is a relentless hogger of headlines, mostly negative.

Another aspect of the low public recognition of Steenhuisen is widespread media animosity.

The editorial commentary is remorselessly negative, focusing on seemingly minor internal party spats that Steenhuisen has had with former office bearers, to the exclusion of just about everything else.

The personal media hostility extends to his party. The DA struggles to get anything like the kind of evenhanded news coverage that one would expect from media houses that crow continually about their supposed journalistic professionalism.

Unlike Steenhuisen, only 2.5% of respondents did not know Julius Malema. It says something for the lure of populism that Malema, with a 27.2% rating, was about two and a half times more favourably viewed than Steenhuisen.

But both men – in public perceptions – are racially divisive figures. While 58% of whites felt favourably towards Steenhuisen, this dropped to 28% of coloureds, 13% of Indians and 2% of blacks.

Malema, in turn, was disliked by 43% of all respondents, breaking down to 97% of white respondents, 95% of Indian, and 61% of coloureds.

Interestingly, Malema is divisive also in the black community: 36% liked Malema and 36% disliked him.

This brings us back to the problem of electoral masochism. No matter what the ANC does or fails to do, it remains electorally powerful.

The IRR poll found that 68% of respondents believe that state capture is continuing. That chimes with a recent Afrobarometer poll which found that 64% of South Africans believe corruption has got worse under Ramaphosa’s administration.

Less than a fifth of IRR respondents felt their lives had improved in the past five years. More than 80% said their lives had stagnated or got worse.

The IRR writes, “For the ANC, these are dangerous times… if its popularity does drop below 50%, as we anticipate, this will be seen as an incontrovertible marker that the times of one-party dominance are coming to an end.”

Such optimism is probably premature. Those alienated by the ANC won’t finally turn their back on the party until they have a new political refuge.

As the IRR poll indicates, neither of the major opposition parties is yet that alternative.