‘Jolt to reality’: Gaza war shakes up South Africa’s election campaign

In the 2019 general election, voter turnout was only 49 percent – the lowest since the first democratic vote in the country in 1994.

The ANC also seemed like a party running aground, with fewer than 50 percent of respondents in an October survey by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) supporting it. Protests against soaring costs of living were becoming frequent and Ramaphosa’s re-election campaign was enmeshed in a scandal after about $500,000 in cash was stolen from his game farm.

But the parties’ differing positions on the war have helped boost the ailing ANC’s chances.

In the Western Cape Province, which has been governed by the DA since 2009 and where it traditionally dominates, a realignment of the electorate is under way. The province, one of South Africa’s largest, is home to Cape Town, the country’s parliamentary capital and second-largest city.

Luwayne Pretorius, a 46-year-old beauty industry worker there says that as a gay Afrikaner man, the ANC gave him more rights than any other country in the world, but his loyalty shifted to the DA when Ramaphosa’s predecessor Jacob Zuma took power in 2009.

Zuma, who in 2006 said same-sex marriages are “a disgrace to the nation and to God”, has also been implicated in several corruption scandals during his tenure which ended in 2018.

However, Pretorius’s stance has changed drastically due to current events.

“By being so fervent in taking a stance against apartheid Israel, it really says something about the ANC,” Pretorius said. “But with the DA, especially after apartheid, there is no way for a party to justify supporting another country committing an ethnic cleansing while simulating an apartheid state similar to what we saw in South Africa.”

Historically, foreign policy has not influenced the voting decisions of South Africans, says Robert Mattes, a professor of government and public policy at the University of Strathclyde and co-founder of Afrobarometer, a pan-African political survey organisation.

“There is a lot of activism in Cape Town largely in the coloured community and the Muslim portion of that community, but this is likely the portion of voters already voting ANC. For Muslim voters who are highly motivated by a party’s approach to Palestine, those who vote for the DA will be irritated and revolted, but not enough for them to move to the ANC. If they move away from the DA, it will be to smaller parties.”

Na’eem Jeenah, senior researcher at the Johannesburg-based think tank Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), agrees with Mattes that in general, South Africans vote primarily based on domestic issues.

But this time will be different, he says.

“There certainly will be a shift of voters away from the DA as a result of its support for Israel and its refusal to speak about the genocide in Gaza,” Jeenah told Al Jazeera.

He predicts that while some will vote ANC because of their pro-Palestine actions, many others will choose other parties like the Muslim party Al Jama-ah to protest against the DA without “rewarding the ANC with their vote”.