The world’s year of elections simmers

Democracy’s march has been relentless this year as world leaders confront the will of the people

What a time to be alive. At least if you’re a “political analyst”. Or even a virgin minister in a freshly minted cabinet, such as South Africa’s so-called government of national unity (GNU) or Labour’s return to power in Britain.  

These are heady days, with an unrelenting — and often contradictory — torrent of landscape-shifting political events. 

It was always going to be a bumper year for democracy, with a record number of national elections taking place in 2024 with more than half the world’s population eligible to vote. 

But from the very start the plotlines have sharpened the drama, and added to the prevailing uncertainty. 

Due to be held on 25 February, the Senegalese presidential election was postponed indefinitely by presidential decree just three weeks before by incumbent Macky Sall, giving rise to huge concern about the democratic well-being of the important West African state. But, after the National Assembly had set a new date for December, the constitutional council intervened against the backdrop of popular protest and ordered that the election take place as soon as possible. 

On 24 March, Senegal elected the remarkably young Bassirou Faye, 44, a former tax authority official, just 10 days after his release from an 11-month spell in detention on the spurious charges of “spreading false information” and the like. 

The contest for truth in the digital age has been a constant drumbeat in this year’s festival of electoral democracy. 

Fast forward to June and EU elections that have tended to matter a great deal less to citizens of the 26-country block than their leaders and the bureaucracy in Brussels, given historically low turnout. Fears of a big surge of nationalist populism proved to be largely unjustified in the event, with an incoherent new landscape emerging across Europe. 

But the victory in France of Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN) dominated headlines. It prompted President Emmanuel Macron to call a snap early legislative election after his centralist party secured barely half of the FN’s tally of votes — a bold and risky move that appears to at least half paid off: a left-of-centre alliance squeezed FN’s vote in the early July legislative election, as Macron’s party rallied somewhat. 

Macron now has a tricky decision to make as to who will be the new prime minister: a centralist loyalist, a Republican from the centre-right (most likely) or a representative of the  New Popular Front left alliance. 

The British, as is their wont, made a far more decisive choice, armed with a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all electoral system. Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won 63% of the seats in the House of Commons with 33% of the votes cast — a landslide, for sure, but one that leaves a lot of backbench Labour MPs with slim majorities; the first rebellion is already loading, on the subject of child welfare protection. 

Starmer will be a far better, and more progressive, prime minister than he was leader of the opposition. He has integrity, composure under pressure, and good judgment — as his career as a human rights lawyer and public prosecutor has shown.

The similarities with President Cyril Ramaphosa should not go unnoticed. 

After 14 years of facing a chaotic, increasingly unhinged, Tory government, Pretoria now has a serious government to do business with, and one with similar social democratic disposition. 

While there is a wide range of issues on which they could find common cause, next year’s G20, hosted by South Africa — the first on African soil, and with the African Union now a member, could be a landmark, transformational occasion, if sufficient consensus — to coin a popular phrase — can be built between G20 countries of the Global South and Western powers. 

Much of course will depend on who is representing the US — the final episode that awaits us in this year’s political drama. Few would have predicted the steepness of Joe Biden’s sad decline in health. But his withdrawal is a game-changing event, as it will allow the Democrats to focus on Donald Trump’s innumerable weaknesses and character defects. Kamala Harris has come out of the gate at pace, and now that she can break free from the shackles of the vice-presidency, a place where many a political career has gone to die, appears to be a far stronger campaigner than was widely thought. 

The outcome of the November ballot in the US will, as always, have enormous implications for everyone, everywhere. Never in history has humanity needed to maximise global cooperation on a complex web of interlocking issues, from climate action to immigration and trade, to peace and conflict. 

The ability of centralist and progressive political leaders, such as Ramaphosa and Starmer, to bend the path of history in more collaborative, peaceful and intelligent ways will depend on the extent to which the contemporary Great Powers — the US and China — will enable such leadership and multilateral cooperation. 

Beneath this lies the willingness of leaders such as Ramaphosa and Starmer to continue to confront, and defeat, populist and nationalist political forces, including within their own parties. 

Both are doing so, with gumption and a quiet but steely resolve. It may seem like modest fare at a time when people are looking for new hope and fresh ideas, but staring down such authoritarian, antidemocratic forces should not be underestimated. Respect for the rule of law and constitutional institutions are essential for any progressive political project. 

This, ultimately, was the argument that prevailed in the ANC in the intense two weeks that followed the 29 May elections. 

There is a great deal to be said about the intricacy of what unfolded behind closed doors, and not just those of the ANC but the Democratic Alliance, but that story can wait for another day. 

Safe to say that it required a sense of strategic vision and courage on both sides, and that in the end the leadership of both organisations summoned the political mettle to take decisions that were both unpopular in some important quarters of their own parties and perhaps with the wider electorate, too. 

Time will tell, but taking that kind of risk is the hallmark of real leadership. 

The greatest jeopardy now is that it will not lead to meaningful, and tangible, change. The GNU probably has a window of 12 to 18 months to show it can deliver coherent governance that makes a difference to the lives of millions of ordinary people. 

Labour faces the same challenge in Britain. An interesting piece in the New Statesman by George Eaton reminded one that in 1974 Starmer’s political hero — Harold Wilson, not Tony Blair — sent his cabinet a list of “little things that mean a lot”, including class-conscious ideas such as “the preservation of local breweries”, “May Day as a bank holiday”, and “concessionary fares for the elderly”. 

Easily dismissed by ideologues as mere “deliverism”, these are the sort of things that the governments of Ramaphosa and Starmer should probably focus on — especially as neither political leader has a big vision for the future that confronts the structural barriers to substantive equality; there will never be a “Starmerism” any more than there will be a “Ramaphosaism”.

South Africa’s social stakeholders, including business and labour, have a big opportunity to help compile this list of “little things” — the apparently small things that can make a disproportionate difference to people’s well-being and to the economy, and that can build confidence both within and outside of the government. 

In this context, it is, finally, worth noting that not all the action in 2024 has been at the ballot box. 

In Kenya, for example, ongoing social protests have loosened President William Ruto’s apparent iron-fist grip on power, leading him to dismiss the whole of his cabinet — not enough to satisfy the protesters, however. Just one example of a growing list from around Africa and beyond. 

Making sense of all this political action is far from easy. It bears all the hallmarks of a deeply contested transition period — the turbulence before the big, probably revolutionary crash. In most of the elections this year turnout has been low — including the record low in South Africa that meant that just one in seven eligible voters actually voted for the ANC — a huge fall in its political legitimacy. 

Unless centralist and progressive governments can find ways to rebuild trust, by delivering things that tangibly improve the lives of the working class in granular ways and that provide them with an authentic pathway towards a middle-class life, the protests will increase and “deliverism” will simply run out of runway. 

Richard Calland is a visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Governance and a founding partner at political risk consultancy The Paternoster Group.