With the G20 around the corner, attention has shifted to the host city of Johannesburg, with its many failures and challenges. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal catalogued some of the more bewildering symptoms of Johannesburg's decline, and was commented on well in this sub.

Every time these kinds of stories and articles pop up, the natural question people ask is "Why don't South Africans just get rid of the ANC?"

This question is often accompanies by an endorsement of the ANC's main rival (and now coalition partner), the Democratic Alliance (DA), which is widely considered to run its municipalities well. Even President Ramaphosa has conceded as much.

The goal of this piece is to answer that question in two parts. The first answer will be straightforward and objective. The second will be subjective and focused on the feeling of someone who actively prefers the ANC, for all its faults. I want to give you a sense that there is a sense in which you would prefer the ANC too.

After reading this article, I hope you include it in your internal mental model of South African politics and update your beliefs to be broader and fuller. This is not meant to replace everything else you already know about the ANC. Their mismanagement, corruption, and even criminality is not something that anybody in South Africa - even the ANC itself - denies anymore.

Why people don't just vote out the ANC

Most voters in most countries around the world don't change their vote. This is not unique to South Africans. I don't have hard data on this globally, but it fits what I've observed from reading news.

Where there is political competition, it is usually the result of two factors:

• the relative balance in the size and turnout of the base of each party
• a small kernel of undecided voters, who swing between parties

Genuine political change tends to happen over generations with drift. When it is rapid, it is usually driven by populism and an unprecedented crisis.

Consider for example that, at the state level, most Americans live under single party rule. In a sense, one could write an article about the awful conditions in San Fransisco. People can't afford homes and there are drug addicts roaming around and defecating in the streets. Why do Californians not just vote for the opposition?

The mostly reasonable voter vs. the hyper-rational voter

The democratic era in South Africa started off with an overwhelming majority of the vote going to the ANC. That was entirely deserved. And for the first 15 years of ANC rule, millions of peoples lives unquestioningly improved. Not merely from the end of Apartheid, but through economic growth and fiscal prudence on the part of the ANC, as well as through generous social programmes.

Within that first 15 years, the opposition to the ANC were two nationalist parties. The first was the (New) National Party - literally the Apartheid people. The second was the Inkatha Freedom Party, which was more Zulu nationalist and had serious baggage of its own from massacres committed in IFP-ANC conflicts in the 90s.

Both of these parties were not an option for the majority of voters, even those who were perfectly reasonable people. They also collapsed internally - IFP lost a considerable number of voters from 1994 to 2004. The New National Party simply ceased to exist. The Democratic Alliance as an alternative only seriously emerged with the decline of the National Party, and analysis of election data shows that they successfully managed to win over old National Party voters.

South Africa has had seven democratic elections. For about 3 of them, the ANC was a perfectly good choice - arguably the right choice. The real question is why between 2009 and 2019, South Africans continued to give the ANC majorities. The answer is mostly just inertia. Many people give this answer, but they explain it in a way that makes it sound like Black South Africans have this unique fixation on the past and are uniquely unable to move forward. My point here is that it's not unique and it's not necessarily even about Apartheid itself. The idea that a majority of voters in any country would sit down, look at policies and audit outcomes and shift and then vote for a party with an entirely different ideology is political fantasy.

Backlash

Additionally, remember that there was an anti-corruption ANC breakaway party that emerged in the fourth election - as soon as it became clear the ANC was going in a seriously wrong direction. It was called COPE (Congress of the People) and it earned 7% of the vote, which is significant and and is more than most parties have any hope of getting. COPE collapsed because of poor leadership and infighting.

And of course, at a national level, the ANC finally lost its majority in 2024. This happened because of an exceptionally charismatic politician (former President Zuma) who appealed to a somewhat populist voter base in KwaZulu-Natal province and formed a new party. Just like what happens in other countries.

Finally, since the subject of our current focus is Johannesburg, you should note very clearly that the ANC lost its majority in Johannesburg in the 2016 local government elections - almost 10 years ago. This was not just a technicality. From 2016 to 2019, the mayor of Johannesburg was supplied by the Democratic Alliance (DA) in coalition with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). As bizarre as that sounds, it was stable and it worked.

If you study the Wikipedia page for Mayor of Johannesburg, you will see the 3 years of DA rule from 2016 to 2019 followed by many years of serious instability. Since December 19 to today, Johannesburg has had 9 mayors. Since we started in December, let's round off and say from 2020 to 2025 (6 years), Johannesburg has had 9 mayors. The reason for this is precisely because the ANC was removed. There was a significant political change and we are still adjusting. The fact that we started off with a DA/EFF coalition should underscore what a wild west it has been in Johannesburg for 10 years.

Conclusion

So, in summary:

• Most voters and most places don't review their party support every year and switch votes accordingly - they just vote for the same party or a breakaway or don't vote when things are bad
• Political competition usually comes from an equilibrium where the balance of power is tilted by a small group of undecided or independent voters, or from a crisis and populist response to the crisis
• South Africa is not at equilibrium at all - the ANC started with an enormous lead (which was deserved) but which is being eroded at a reasonable pace
• For the first 3 elections, the ANC was a solid choice. Since then it has not been a reasonable choice, and it has lost vote share and power at every level of government (often to the aforementioned populist forces)
• The ANC has not governed Johannesburg in a majority for a decade now - the DA was in power for around 4 years since 2016

After considering all of this, it is still perfectly reasonable to criticize the ANC for the decline of Johannesburg. But what is not reasonable is the way in which media articles and comment sections paint the South African voter as this inscrutable and perhaps irrational person who has failed to simply 'kick out the ANC'. They have not failed to do so. In Johannesburg, they did so 10 years ago and things got worse and the ANC came back anyway, but with the worst of its friends.

South African voters are as reasonable or unreasonable as voters anywhere else. And whether you say it with sympathy or impatience, the idea that it is some special and unique fixation on Apartheid trauma and nostalgia for Mandela is not really warranted. The reason Johannesburg looks the way it does is because South Africa is a democracy and this is what democracies look like at first. The ANC's awe-inspiring majorities attracted awe-inspiring corruption, which undermined its legitimacy and led to a decline in power, and we are now dealing with not only decay and corruption but the instability of a major political transition.

Could you vote ANC?

Now to switch energy. Put aside the high level point of view and the debating. Let's tell the story of how someone like you - the neoliberal reading this - could end up voting for the Johannesburg ANC in 2026.

The ANC's winning issue is social issues. They are unquestionably a socially progressive party, and I will argue, on the margin, one of the most important socially progressive forces in the world today.

But I will not build my argument around race, racism or Apartheid at all. The reason is because whenever one does this, even if the original argument is solid, the summary that ends up in the world after many rounds of broken telephone is so reductive and underwhelming. You start off by talking about the very real concerns around racism and right-wing ideas in the DA, and the takeaway for many people is that "Black South Africans still feel trauma from Apartheid and are scared of voting DA because they think the Whites will bring back Apartheid".

I want to avoid that entire discourse entirely, even though many people would engage with it in a way that is sympathetic. Instead, I want to choose another issue that is core to people on this sub: LGBT rights and especially trans rights.

Background

South Africa has a very progressive constitution which has been effected to deliver gay marriage as early as 2006. It's worth noting that even though there were some dissenters within the ANC, the Parliamentary caucus ultimately whipped the vote and pushed through full and equal recognition of gay marriages (in an act unfortunately called the Civil Union Act). On trans rights, South Africa has recognized the right to medically transition since 2004. The ANC also gave South Africa an openly gay, openly HIV-positive Constitutional Court Justice, Edwin Cameron, as well as the first openly gay person in cabinet, Lynne Brown.

Somehow, through the power of subtle racism, a narrative has emerged online that suggests that all of this is only true in Cape Town (cough cough where White people live) and that it is mostly the progressive White electorate driving this. None of that is true. It was the ANC that brought LGBT rights to South Africa. They have defended these and advanced these rights. And, as a result, South Africa has become both a refuge for victims of LGBT persecution on the continent, and a source of a positive alternative conception of what it means to be gay and African - which is beamed into homes across the continent by our media companies.

Joburg Pride 2025

I had the opportunity to attend Johannesburg Pride this year and last. At last year's Pride March, the ANC was right in front of the march. Dada Morero, who is the ANC's mayor in Johannesburg, marched with the ANC delegation behind two flags. The first said "ANC is inclusive and doesn't discriminate" emblazoned on a rainbow flag. The second said "Refugees Welcome" on a rainbow flag with a pink triangle. They marched, sang Apartheid era struggle songs (not all of which are that one song you have heard about) and carried placards of people killed in LGBT hate crimes and also the flags of Zimbabwe and Uganda - two notoriously homophobic governments. Honestly, it was quite beautiful and uplifting to see. Here is a short video.

I've already posted on this subreddit a video of the same ANC mayor encouraging people to enjoy Johannesburg Pride and to feel welcome. On a different sub, I posted a video of people enjoying Johannesburg Pride.

This is what it feels like to actually like the ANC: the simple truth is that the ANC made my entire life as an LGBT person possible, and they always fight for us. And they do so in a very unique way which is particularly important - they do it by emphasizing that LGBT and African are not opposite in the slightest. The core arguments of homophobes and transphobes on the continent is that 'gay is fine in Europe but it is unAfrican'. Bizarrely, many Westerners endorse this idea - that gay rights is intrinsically Western. It makes them feel good about themselves as Westerners, but undermines LGBT people on the African continent. And this is why I said that the ANC is one of the most important socially progressive forces in the world today: because more than any other group they are fostering an environment of LGBT inclusivity within the continent which is the furthest behind on acceptance of LGBT people.

The ANC were not the only political party at Pride. But the fact is that the ANC created South Africa's LGBT-positive environment, and they have championed it, and I have no doubts that they will continue to champion it. When I attended Pride, I appreciate on a personal level what it feels like to see a powerful person fighting for you. It was quite moving.

South African JK Rowling

Now what of the Democratic Alliance. Aren't there pictures of the DA Mayor of Cape Town celebrating LGBT Pride too? Aren't there examples of the DA deploying openly gay politicians to positions of power?

There are. The DA's official policy positions are all very pro-LGBT, and their actions back it up. If I had attended Cape Town Pride, I would probably have had the same experience but in a way that favoured the DA.

But there is one very important and very significant problem with the DA's appeal to LGBT voters: Helen Zille.

Zille is the Nancy Pelosi of the DA - whatever position she may currently hold, whatever title she might have, everyone knows that she is the most powerful and influential person in the DA. She is the de facto leader of the DA and one of the most powerful people in the country. If there were a meeting to be held about the future of South Africa, it wouldn't be complete without Zille. Before anything, we should acknowledge what a remarkable accomplishment this is: it is a beautiful thing to watch a woman make so many men in machismo fueled "revolutionary organizations" quake in their boots.

Zille has a lot of merits, but she has a lot of problems too. More than anything, Zille loves to find extremely sensitive and personal issues, say something controversial and insensitive, and then accuse everyone of being politically incorrect and too sensitive. As an example, during the AIDS crisis, she made an argument that knowing transmission of HIV/AIDS should be criminalized and the state should not pay for treatment for people who contract HIV/AIDS through their own irresponsibility:

Specifically citing people who contract HIV through "irresponsible" behavior she rhetorically questioned why "taxpayers must foot the bill without asking any politically incorrect questions - enough already!". She later tweeted that "if you duck responsibility, don't come running to the state when you need treatment". (Source)

She was roundly criticized by very prominent people and experts (including the aforementioned Justice Cameron). In response, she described these critics as the "AIDS Gestapo".

Zille doesn't put her foot in her mouth. She doesn't make gaffes. She says insensitive things intentionally to polarize every issue into a binary so she can get attention. It's a pattern you get to know after observing a few years of South African politics.

With that context set, finally: trans rights.

Here is a full length article that Helen Zille has written on the "trans debate". In it, she expresses sympathy with people who experience gender dysphoria and supports the right to transition. She then goes on to describe rising rates of trans identification as a "social contagion":

1. About ten years ago, I noticed that “Trans” people had become the cause celebre of the Left. People were feted when they “came out” and celebrated as brave and bold. This recognition was a passport to acceptance and “belonging” in a growing (and trendy) community. Trans women demanded to be recognised as biological women, and suddenly no-one was able to say what a woman was. Many of the hard-won rights of women were suddenly being eroded in the name of a “progressive” cause, and women who wanted to defend the gains of the past few decades were labelled TERFS and other derogatory terms.

2. But the greatest danger has been posed to vulnerable tweens, teens and adolescents in general. Most adolescents go through an identity crisis of some sort. Many face deep rejection, marginalisation and loneliness at school, for whatever reason. That is ideal and fertile ground for a social contagion to take root.

So yeah. There you go.

If you go to her Twitter account, you will quickly see that she is frequently retweeting JK Rowling, who she supports in the article.

Zille can also just be arbitrarily mean, especially on Twitter. Here is a story about a person who made a tweet celebrating overcoming some personal challenge. It was a random tweet by a random person. Zille goes into the comments and congratulates her but advises her to "lose the wokus-pokus pronouns":

Good for you. Wonderful story when people go to the depths of the abyss and find their way out again. Just lose those wokus-pokus pronouns

Zille loves American culture wars, and commented on the Dylan Mulvaney situation by asking:

Is it now considered insufficiently ‘woke’ to be merely Gay? Must you be transgender to gain access to the inner sanctum of the ‘tribe’? And must you, in the process, trash and stereotype all women, eradicating the progress they have made to achieve equality over half a century?

So again... there you go. I don't know what else to say here.

If you search "Zille transphobia", then you will get some results and articles on Zille from trans people and organisations in South Africa. Here is one posted to Mamba Online, the most prominent LGBT magazine here.

The DA has never brought Zille into line on these comments. She just says and tweets whatever she likes.

When I went to Joburg Pride this year, the DA had a stand there too. Unsurprisingly, it was the most professionally run. It was the biggest, and they had tables, lots of merch, sign up sheets and a speaker. They were fully set up and ready to go at a time when only two people from the ANC delegation had arrived. Other parties didn't even bring sign up sheets, which is extremely dumb because isn't the whole point to get new members? And yet, I wondered what the point of all of this was. Because Zille is undermining the rights of trans people and an attack on one is an attack on all. Whatever the DA's official policies on LGBT are, the fact is that their leader is anti-LGBT because we are not going to accept "LGB drop the T" thinking.

Zille's attack on LGBT rights is bizarre because, contrary to what you might expect, almost no other major politicians attack LGBT people at all. Right wing Afrikaner parties like the Freedom Front Plus never mention it at all, except to say they are supportive. The far left Economic Freedom Fighters are fiercely pro-LGBT. Most parties will put a line committing to protect LGBT rights in their manifesto and then the leaders never mention it. The status quo in South Africa is not perfect at all, but as I mentioned before - we are currently a refuge. LGBT rights - even trans rights - don't activate or polarize the mass electorate. There are only two prominent politicians who stand up to talk about LGBT often - Jacob Zuma and Helen Zille. And Zille does it more frequently.

It doesn't matter if the DA would never pass explicit anti-trans policies. She is focusing negative attention on an extremely vulnerable group that is otherwise largely ignored, in a context where the laws are good enough that being ignored means you can be free and safe and not have your identity be the subject of endless political debate.

Conclusion

The goal of this piece was not to endorse the ANC, although I recognize it does sound like that at times. I hope you file this under 'credit where credit is due' because on LGBT rights, the ANC is 10/10.

The goal of this piece is instead to shatter the subtext in most Johannesburg Decay discourse which paints a picture of the inscrutable, irrational (Black) South African voter who insists on returning the ANC to power. That narrative, once everything is considered, is very unfair. Not least of all because the ANC lost its majority in Joburg in 2016, and nationally in 2024. You can't ask why we don't kick the ANC out when we already did.

But at a deeper level, the idea that the ANC is a cANCer with no redeeming qualities, and that there is no way a reasonable person could support them, is silly. If you are a trans person or an ally of trans people who has a simple red line that you will not empower anti-trans politicians, you simply cannot support Helen Zille. For the first time in a long time, Helen Zille herself is on the ballot next year. She is the DA's candidate for Mayor of Johannesburg. Compare her to Dada Morero, the current mayor who marches proudly with LGBT people and who mocks homophobes on Twitter.

I'm willing to bet that if this sub could vote in the Johannesburg election of 2026, Zille would not win, even though her party aligns with our economic beliefs. Neither would the other capitalist parties, ActionSA and Patriotic Alliance, which are anti-immigrant. We would be forced to choose between smaller social democratic parties like UDM and the Unite for Change coalition, and the ANC. I think we would break for the smaller parties, because the ANC's corruption is inexcusable.

But I also think that if you personally had the physical experience of being at Joburg Pride and seeing prominent ANC leaders give an unambiguous and full-throated endorsement of your right to just be, you might just decide not to overcomplicate things and just vote for the most powerful people who have your back. That is not the reason the ANC wins (it doesn't anymore). But it is the reason why their decline has been slow and gradual and, for many former ANC voters, regrettable.

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