The election results were pretty predictable, but the election was certainly conducted in a very good spirit and I think South Africans are masters at this.  You could see the reaction in the Rand – which went, in 24 hours, from when the election began until the results were trickling, from R10,52 to R10,32 to the Dollar and that means if it stays that way, we will be rewarded with lower petrol prices at the end of this month again.  It is a sign of international confidence in South Africa that we have once again pulled off a peaceful election.  

It is certainly not a sign of confidence necessarily in the ruling party, and one only has to look at the election results in Gauteng over the last 10 years to realise that the ANC is being sent a message that they must shape up or accept that in about 10 to 15 years they will be voted out of power.  Ten years ago the ANC received 68% of the votes in Gauteng that is now down to 53,5% already.  It is amazing how predictably we are following precisely the patterns that have happened in other countries where the liberation party has slowly lost favour and the best example would be Zimbabwe where the ruling party’s majority support comes, without belittling anybody, from rural people who are generally far poorer and less educated.  They have lost support in the urban areas and when one looks at Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria you see exactly the same pattern slowly happening in South Africa as well.  If one takes poorer provinces and more isolated towns, the ANC’s support is almost as strong as ever, but it is in the urban areas where city dwellers, who are generally more sophisticated and better educated, are beginning to get fed-up.  I think there is still a lot of loyalty towards the ANC, and I fully understand that, but unless they cut down on corruption and improve themselves considerably in terms of economic policies and job growth, I think they are going to run into problems.

The population is not entirely naïve, and there is a limit to how many times you can campaign on the basis of 6 million new jobs.  I cannot believe that anybody truly believes that in 5 years’ time we will have 6 million new jobs, but the ANC has promised that and so let’s hope for the sake of the country that a miracle happens and somehow they deliver on this particular promise.  Of course, and that is a part that always worries one, there are other lessons to be learnt from Zimbabwe and that is when all else fails and you cannot deliver jobs and prosperity, then you can start blaming white people and start threatening to nationalise everything and deal with things that way.  That is probably more the approach of the EFF, who not only have learnt nothing from Zimbabwe, but greatly admire Robert Mugabe.  I don’t believe we would ever go down that route, because we have seen how disastrous it is economically and when we have such a perfect case study, just north of our country, on what not to do, it would really be foolhardy to try and imitate anything that the leader of our neighbouring state did!