South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has suffered an electoral setback that could eventually open the door to improved relations with Israel, although a shift toward more radical coalition partners could have the opposite effect, two South African experts told a gathering in Jerusalem on Tuesday night.
Speaking at an event at the Friends of Zion Museum devoted to her 13th book, Corrupt Comparison: South Africa, Israel, and the Hijacking of History, South African legal and political scholar Dr. Anthea Jeffery said the ANC’s declining popularity reflected growing public dissatisfaction with corruption, deteriorating public services and decades of political dominance.
Benji Shulman, director of the Johannesburg-based Middle East Africa Research Institute (MERI), which organized the event, warned that the electoral setback could also threaten South Africa’s government of national unity, potentially pushing the ANC toward parties even more hostile to Israel.
The discussion followed South Africa’s municipal elections, held Nov. 2-4, in which the ANC received 30.76% of the national vote, down from 45.59% in the 2021 local elections.
The Democratic Alliance (DA), the ANC’s principal rival and a partner in the national unity government, won 24.64%, while former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party received 9.76%. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), led by Julius Malema, secured 6.22%.
The results marked another significant decline for the ANC, which has governed South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.
A political turning point
Responding to a question from JNS about the election results and their possible impact on South Africa’s relationship with Israel, Shulman described the ANC as a diminished political force.
“The ANC is now a 30% party,” he said.
Shulman noted that previous losses of ANC support had often benefited parties that emerged from the same ideological tradition, including the EFF and MK. This time, he argued, parties outside that political camp were making substantial gains.
However, he cautioned that the ANC’s poor performance could destabilize its coalition with the DA, established after the 2024 national elections deprived the ANC of its parliamentary majority for the first time.
He warned that elements within the ANC might seek to abandon the current arrangement and reunite with their former political allies.
“Maybe we should go back to get the band back together,” he said, referring to a possible alliance with the EFF and MK.
Such a coalition, sometimes described by the DA as a “doomsday coalition,” could pursue more radical domestic and foreign policies, including a harder line against Israel, Shulman suggested.
He warned that the consequences could extend beyond diplomatic relations, potentially worsening South Africa’s economic and political difficulties.
Alternatively, if the current government survives, Shulman suggested that the ANC’s continued decline could create opportunities for a different approach to Israel.
He pointed to the 2029 national elections as a possible turning point, particularly given uncertainty over the ANC’s future leadership.
Shulman also noted that some ministers in the current government hold positions more favorable to Israel than those traditionally associated with the ANC.
The challenge to ANC dominance
Jeffery, a longtime researcher at the South African Institute of Race Relations, said the election results should also be understood against the background of declining public confidence in the ANC.
For years, she explained, more South Africans had stayed away from elections than voted for the governing party.
She attributed this partly to the absence of a credible alternative government during the early decades of South Africa’s democracy.
The ANC had successfully stigmatized its opponents, particularly the DA, by portraying them as representatives of white interests who might seek to restore apartheid, she said.
However, Jeffery argued that the effectiveness of those accusations was diminishing as voters increasingly judged parties by their performance.
“The ANC’s capacity to convince people of that will diminish as its support diminishes,” she said.
Jeffery pointed to the deterioration of electricity supplies, water infrastructure, roads, traffic lights and rubbish collection in many ANC-controlled municipalities.
“If you’re in an ANC area, things don’t work,” she said.
By contrast, she argued, the DA had demonstrated that it could provide better services, including in predominantly black communities.
Jeffery also criticized the ANC’s implementation of black economic empowerment policies, arguing that government contracts intended to promote economic inclusion had frequently been undermined by corruption, inflated prices and failures to deliver essential services.
The consequences, she said, were felt most severely by ordinary South Africans who depended on functioning municipal infrastructure.
She suggested that declining ANC support, combined with a greater willingness among previously disengaged voters to support alternative parties, could accelerate political change.
Nevertheless, she acknowledged the possibility of an ANC alliance with the EFF and MK, whose ideological positions she described as strongly socialist and opposed to Israel.
The Israel question
Shulman said the DA faced a delicate political calculation over Israel.
Although the party has traditionally been more moderate than the ANC on foreign policy, it is seeking to broaden its electoral appeal, including among South Africa’s Muslim communities.
He recalled that the ANC had made Palestinian solidarity a central theme of its 2024 national election campaign, including at its final major rally in Cape Town, a DA stronghold.
“Palestine was a core part of the ANC’s electoral campaign,” Shulman said.
According to Shulman, Palestinian flags dominated the event, reflecting the ANC’s attempt to mobilize support around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
However, he argued that the strategy had failed to produce the electoral gains the ANC sought.
The DA, meanwhile, generally preferred to concentrate on domestic governance and service delivery rather than become embroiled in disputes over Israel, he said.
Smaller parties, including the African Christian Democratic Party, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Patriotic Alliance, had taken more outspoken positions.
Shulman suggested that a changing balance of political power could eventually allow South Africa to reconsider its confrontational relationship with Israel.
Challenging the apartheid accusation
In Corrupt Comparison, Jeffery challenges the accusation that Israel is an apartheid state, drawing on decades of research to compare South Africa’s apartheid laws with Israeli policies on both sides of the Green Line.
The book argues that the two systems have little in common, tracing the origins of the accusation to Soviet Cold War disinformation campaigns and its subsequent promotion through activist reports, United Nations resolutions and international legal proceedings.
Jeffery warned that propaganda and the use of international law as a political weapon were making a fair resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict increasingly difficult.
She recalled how Soviet intelligence officials sought to influence Western public opinion by repeatedly spreading misleading narratives until they became widely accepted.
“There must be a huge fightback against the propaganda,” she said.
But Jeffery’s argument extends beyond Israel. Her book contends that the apartheid accusation forms part of a broader campaign targeting the United States and other Western democracies.
“The apartheid accusation against Israel is part of a multidimensional war against the West, which has been steadily intensifying for decades,” she writes in the preface.
“Many elements in that war have already been identified, making it easier to counter them. The apartheid element is less readily apparent and thus too little understood. This book seeks to remedy that situation. It aims to help those wanting to safeguard Western democracy to recognize what is at stake in this additional arena of the conflict.”
