Fears of extremism live in the minds of South Africans, not in reality | IOL News

South Africans hate to miss out on global disasters. This explains why last week’s national election is being touted as a victory for extremism.

Although the FF+ nominated a conservative “Coloured” politician, Peter Marais, as its candidate for the Western Cape province in an attempt to gain from disenchantment at majority rule among a section of this community, in reality it is the party of the white right-wing. All ten of the members of parliament who will represent it after its gains are white.

In theory, a big swing to a small party could signal that it is on its way to becoming a big party. But there is no way the FF+ is on its way to becoming a big party. It is impossible to tell exactly how many members of any “race” voted a particular way, but we know that just about all its voters are white, which means a relatively small and declining section of the electorate. The 4,5 million whites in South Africa make up only 7,8%of the population of 57,7 million people.

Although it started life as a liberal party, the DA has long been a catch-all for a variety of opponents of the ANC including white voters who do not even pretend to respect black people. Some DA members and public representatives have been caught making racist statements. So being a DA member is not a guarantee of liberal tolerance.

But again, the story is more complicated than it seems. The EFF has contested three elections. It received 8,19% in the 2016 municipal elections. This means that it added two percentage points to its vote at each election. If it carries on doing this, it will take another 20 elections, local and national, for it to challenge for power, which means that it would have to wait around 60 years.

Nor does a growth in the EFF vote necessarily show greater racial polarisation. People support the EFF for a variety of reasons, including a desire to protest against the ANC. The claim that EFF votes show the sort of polarisation seen in many other democracies misses more than it explains.So, despite much of the hand-wringing, the recent election has shown again that the extremism which worries democrats in much of the world has little traction in South Africa.

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