In the days before South Africa’s May 29 election, there was a euphoric atmosphere in parts of the cosmopolitan but largely Zulu port city of Durban. People who would usually pass each other anonymously could be overheard telling each other, “We are going to fix the country!” There was, though, an ugly underside to this, with current President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is from the smaller Venda ethnic group, often dismissed in vulgar ethnic terms.
The African National Congress (ANC), after 30 years of comfortable rule, took a heavy blow in this election. It secured only 40.2 percent of the vote nationally and took its hardest hit in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where Durban is located. There, it came in far behind the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party—whose figurehead is former President Jacob Zuma. MK finished first with almost 46 percent of votes for the national assembly, taking a large number of votes from the ANC—which won around 17 percent—and many from the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party.
KwaZulu-Natal is South Africa’s second-most populous province—and it is notorious for political violence—including open armed battles fought through the late 1980s and early 1990s, assassinations, and major riots in July 2021.
The electoral success of Zuma’s new party in the recent election has raised fears of further violence.
Organized around the charisma of Zuma, who was the staggeringly corrupt president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018, the MK party takes its name, meaning “spear of the nation,” from the armed wing of the ANC formed by Nelson Mandela and others in 1961. The party lays claim to that history and has adopted a militaristic posture.
Apartheid was, of course, not brought down by that army, which was, in military terms, a failed project. Before Western opinion turned at the end of the Cold War, apartheid was rendered nonviable by the mass democratic politics that began with a series of strikes in Durban in 1973, a popular movement that does not appear in Zuma’s militaristic misrepresentation of political history.
MK endorses an extreme version of the authoritarian populism that has surged in elections around the world. It is best described as ethnically inflected nationalism; while the party has an anticolonial dimension in so far as it seeks to build a counter-elite, it is also socially predatory and deeply conservative on social issues. Zuma has suggested doing away with same-sex marriage, which has been legal in South Africa since 2006; elevating aristocratic tribal authorities over elected representatives; holding a referendum on the death penalty; hiring more police officers; and introducing conscription.
Like other authoritarian populist parties in South Africa and elsewhere, Zuma’s party also takes a hard-right line on immigration. This is a matter of serious concern in South Africa, where African and Asian migrants are often targeted by the state and, periodically, by violent mobs.
MK also has a clear ethnic dimension. This is in sharp contrast to the ANC, which was founded in 1912 with an explicit commitment to build a national sense of African identity that eschewed the politicization of ethnic identities. It remains an ethnically diverse organization led by a member of an ethnic minority group.
Like figures such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, MK is also enthusiastically pro-Putin. Some MK supporters have been seen wearing T-shirts with side-by-side images of Zuma and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But unlike forms of right-wing populism elsewhere, MK also promises economic inclusion in a country where impoverishment and inequality are rampant, along with the effective provision of basic services. It proposes nationalizing banks, mines, and insurance companies; expropriating land and placing it under the control of the state and traditional authorities; and providing free education and full employment.
Due to this platform, newspapers outside South Africa have sometimes referred to Zuma’s party as being “far left.” But the left in South Africa has not rallied in support of MK’s proposals for expropriation and nationalization—largely because Zuma’s record during his nine years as president was dire in terms of creating jobs; providing basic services, decent health care, education, and public housing; and achieving long-promised land reform.
Indeed, corruption during Zuma’s presidency did massive damage to the state, its institutions, and its publicly owned companies and was so extreme that a single family took in just under 50 billion rand (then around $3.2 billion) from public budgets in what came to be known as “state capture.” Zuma’s presidency was also marked by a sharp increase in state repression, including the massacre of 34 striking miners by South African police in 2012 and frequent assassinations of grassroots activists.
A number of commentators across the political spectrum have reduced Zuma’s popularity and electoral success in KwaZulu-Natal to “tribalism,” sometimes with the implication that atavistic forces are at play. The recourse to this deeply colonial idea of the “tribe” is unfortunate. But the ethnic element in Zuma’s politics cannot be overlooked either.
Zuma has sought to stoke ethnic sentiment since he was tried for rape in 2006, when, along with chanting, “Burn the bitch,” in reference to his accuser, some of his supporters wore T-shirts with the slogan “100% Zuluboy.” In the lead-up to the recent election, it was common to hear people in Durban speak of the need to achieve the unity of the Zulu people.
KwaZulu-Natal has a long history of violent ethnic mobilization. Mpondo people from the neighboring Eastern Cape province have been sporadically attacked and driven from their homes for more than a century, including when ethnic sentiment escalated as Zuma ascended to the presidency in 2009.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was open war between Inkatha, then a conservative Zulu-nationalist organization backed by the apartheid state, and the United Democratic Front, a popular anti-apartheid organization that allied itself with the ANC in exile. It is estimated that around 20,000 people were killed between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The apartheid state saw Inkatha as a conservative ally against the Soviet-linked ANC and an ally equally opposed to the ANC’s vision of a unitary democratic state.
The war came to an end when, in secret negotiations between the last apartheid president, F.W. de Klerk, and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi on the eve of the first democratic election, huge concessions were made to Inkatha, most notably via the massive transfer of land in KwaZulu-Natal—around 11,000 square miles, almost the size of Belgium—to the Zulu monarchy. This boosted the power of what is termed “traditional authority” over democratic authority, as people living on the land must pay rent to a trust headed by the Zulu king and are governed by customary law administered by traditional leaders.
The end of the war did not bring peace, though. The province swiftly became notorious for political assassinations within the ANC, between the ANC and other parties, and against grassroots activists. Many hundreds of people have been killed. The problem of assassinations was never seriously dealt with in the province and, as a result, has been steadily making its way into other parts of the country.
In the latter years of Zuma’s presidency, he sought to protect himself against mass outrage at brazen corruption by cynically spinning his government’s kleptocracy as “radical economic transformation.” This was taken up outside of the state by armed so-called business forums that shook down established businesses at gun point and by local party gangsters who appropriated public land for private profit. The capacity for violence developed in this milieu includes access to professional assassins and, in some cases, local militias.
In July 2021, when Zuma was briefly jailed for being in contempt of court, KwaZulu-Natal was ripped apart by riots in which 354 people were killed. The riots were sparked by a breakdown in the social order as supporters of Zuma, some dressed in military fatigues, openly attacked migrants from elsewhere in Africa in downtown Durban while the police stood down. There were also more covert attacks on trucks on the main road to Johannesburg, and many were left burnt. Again the police stood down.
The riots began with the mass appropriation of food in a carnival atmosphere. In the main, there was not much sense that this was a political event, and many participants were clear that they were not motivated by support for Zuma. But the riots soon took on a more ominous tone, and infrastructure was systematically destroyed by groups of armed men acting with military precision. Zuma’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla celebrated the destruction on social media.
Now that the country is suspended between an election result that fundamentally changes its politics and the outcomes of the ongoing high-stakes negotiations to form national and provincial governments, the atmosphere in Durban is more febrile than euphoric.
False claims are being pushed through social media with a startling velocity, with Zuma-Sambudla taking a leading role in the promotion of conspiracy theories. There has been a particular focus, repeated by Zuma in various public statements, on the Trumpian move of declaring, without evidence, that the elections were rigged. The general view is that Zuma and his supporters are making this claim to set the stage for violence, although it is not quite clear what their intentions are.
It is common to hear people say that when the new provincial government comes into power, migrants will be “dealt with” and ethnic minorities will “know their place.” It is not uncommon to hear talk of secession, of an independent Zulu kingdom. There are widespread fears of coming violence, something that a number of grassroots activists say is inevitable. Mqapheli Bonono, one of the most prominent grassroots activists in Durban, said: “There will definitely be violence. We don’t know when or where, but for sure it’s coming.”
Migrants have already been threatened and intimidated. Last Wednesday, an MK organizer was gunned down in Durban. Although there is not yet any evidence of a specific motive, it is being reported by some media as a political killing. It is widely assumed that this is the beginning of an internal struggle for positions and power within MK. Some ethnic minorities fear that they may have to move out of the province. Some have returned to rural family homes outside the province while they wait to see how things play out.
Ramaphosa wishes to establish a national unity government so the ANC can continue to govern the country. It is not yet clear if this will work or if MK will participate in such an arrangement. In KwaZulu-Natal, it is possible that a deal between other parties could keep MK in opposition despite it winning the largest share of the vote. If MK is not part of the deal struck to form a national government, tensions will inevitably escalate. This will be dramatically compounded if the party is kept out of government in KwaZulu-Natal by an alliance of other parties.
If MK does form a government in KwaZulu-Natal, the country will have its second-most populous province governed by a political force directly opposed not just to the national government but to the principles and legal foundations on which the country was founded.
The militaristic posture of Zuma’s party escalates fears of violence, and Zuma himself often makes implicit threats of violence via dog whistles. Speaking in English, he has warned that he should not be “provoked.” Speaking in Zulu, he has said: “Abasazi singo bani” (They don’t know who we are).
The idiomatic meaning here is clear, but, in literal terms, South Africans know exactly who Zuma and his party are.
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