Black voters, whose lives are today harder than ever before, are going to punish the ANC in the 2026 local government elections and the DA is going to benefit from its consistent anti-VAT increase stance, argues Ebrahim Harvey.
Remember the time in September 1991 when the African National Congress (ANC), which had been unbanned the year before, came out strongly against a VAT increase the then white apartheid Nationalist Party (NP) regime was going to impose?
Remember too that the ANC's labour ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), in May 2018 sternly warned the ANC government after it was going to increase VAT by 1%: "You are playing with fire?"
VAT has always been an object of volatile struggles by trade unions in particular and broad civil society more generally for a long time. However, the most vociferous and militant opposition to the present VAT debacle facing the government of national unity (GNU) can be seen on social media, where ordinary people have vented their spleen against a VAT increase of 1%, half of which will be implemented on the 1 May and the other half a percent in next year's budget.
High cost-of-living
There can be no doubt whatsoever that the angry responses on social media have been directly influenced by the present highest cost-of-living crisis we have ever had in the entire history of this country, dating back to when the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. Never before have ordinary people, especially in the poor black townships, struggled daily to put food on the table. Poverty, hunger, malnutrition and related diseases, including the stunted development of children, are much more prevalent than ever before.
It is to the ANC that we have to turn to for answers to the multifaceted crisis we are daily confronted with. Until they lost the May 2024 elections, they were the governing party in this country and had repeatedly promised during the days of the anti-apartheid struggles that when they were in power, the provisions and promises of the 1955 Freedom Charter and 1993 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) would be realised. However, the ANC has long ago turned its back on both the Freedom Charter and the RDP, which is why it ultimately lost power in the 2024 national elections for the first time since 1994, when even ordinary black voters either stayed away from the polls or voted for other parties.
In fact, that is also mainly why the ANC lost Gauteng, the powerhouse of production and nerve-centre of the economy, in both the 2016 and 2021 local government elections. The black working-class voters had finally woken from their loyalist slumber. To crown all that counterrevolutionary politics of the ANC, which was already evident from the outset in 1994 wedded to its distinct neoliberal economic, social and public policies, they have been directly responsible for the latest VAT increase, which has sparked a political crisis in the GNU.
READ | Ebrahim Harvey: Towards understanding the fracas in the GNU
The many years of state capture and massive looting of the public purse, roughly estimated at over R3 trillion, and the related numerous times Eskom and other state-owned-enterprises had to be bailed out is a big part of why we in the first place have a huge fiscal crisis in this country, for which the ANC must take primary responsibility.
But to make matters much worse, even when opposition from all corners of civil society against the VAT increase were vociferously evident across the length and breadth of this country over the past two months, the minister of finance, Enoch Godongwana, continued to argue that there was no alternative to it.
I argue that right there lies the biggest reason for the impending defeat of the ANC in the 2026 local government elections, especially given the results of the previous two elections in Gauteng. I have no doubt at all, that ordinary black voters, whose lives are today harder than ever before, are going to punish the ANC in the 2026 local government elections and that the DA is going to benefit from its consistent anti-VAT increase stance. This is exactly why in a SABC Morning Live interview last week I argued that the ANC has "shot itself in the foot", as regards the 2026 local government elections. Nothing before has more flatly contradicted the allegedly "pro-poor" policies of the ANC than its insistence on VAT increase, which comes into play on 1 May.
Losing support
What has worsened matters for the ANC is the fact that there is no party inside or outside the GNU which unreservedly supports the VAT increase. The main reason why I argued that voters are going to punish the ANC in the 2026 local government elections is the undeniable fact that the VAT increase comes at the worst time in post-apartheid SA, when the poorest black people are suffering like never before under the devastating weight of the current socioeconomic crisis.
READ | Ebrahim Harvey: Neoliberal policies spell trouble for ANC in next local election
It is also important to note that a public opinion poll conducted by the Institute of Race Relations at around the time of the VAT debacle surfaced concluded that the ANC was losing even more support than the 40% they received in the 2024 national elections. They dropped from 40% to just 21% and the DA substantially increased its support from 21% to 30%.
However, this perspective is also considerably based on the fact that over the past few years we have had explicit neoliberal austerity budgets, which made people poorer, with already low standards of living dropping further.
What this means is that the ANC's mantra of being pro-poor has been exposed as a lie over several years and it is this realisation, which I believe partly underscores the huge and angry public opposition to the latest VAT increase.
Therefore, while the outcome of the legal challenge, which the DA launched this week against the VAT increase on 1 May could go against or in favour of the minister of finance, Enoch Godongwana, who authorised it, is very important, I do not think that if it is in his favour it is going to affect or influence majority voter sentiment against the ANC in the 2026 local government elections.
In fact, it might even worsen the revulsion most people feel at this moment. Such is the devastating gravity of the unprecedented cost-of-living crisis they presently face, which will be worsened ever further by any VAT increase.
- Ebrahim Harvey is a political writer, analyst, commentator and author.
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