2024 is our 1924

No, 1994 is not a good comparison

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‘2024 is our 1994’ says the RISE Mzansi election t-shirts. ‘1994 was a crossroads in South Africa’s history’, explains their National Leader Songezo Zibi, and ‘we are at another crossroads now. If we do not change course, we will become another failed African state whose citizens are poor even though our country has natural resources and wealth.’

RISE Mzansi is not the only political party to use this comparison: Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), used the phrase at a Mpumalanga rally in October 2023, and it has featured prominently on the EFF social media feed since. The opening line of the Patriotic Alliance manifesto states: ‘In 2020, the Patriotic Alliance (PA) was the first party to use the slogan “2024 is our 1994”; which many other parties have unsurprisingly copied since then.’

1994 was indeed a momentous year in South African history. It marked the end of apartheid and heralded the beginning of democratic governance with the election of Nelson Mandela as the first black president. Now, thirty years later, and with the ruling African National Congress looking like it will lose its majority, South Africa’s political landscape is about to enter uncharted territory.

But 1994 is not the best comparison for the elections later this month. The 1994 election was infused with a nearly euphoric atmosphere, marked by a broad sense of optimism, whereas the mood surrounding 2024 is much more grounded in reality. In short, 1994 was more focused on political rather than economic transformation.

A far better analogy would be the South African general election of 1924, exactly a century ago. Although the system was racially segregated, several of the issues and circumstances of the era chimed with what we see around us today.

By 1924, the country had only been governed by a single political party, the South African Party (SAP). The country had just come out of a war and a pandemic that had debilitated the economy, leading to substantial job losses. The ruling party’s elite had also become increasingly detached from the everyday realities faced by the electorate. This was especially true of its leader, Jan Smuts, who was said to be more interested in international affairs than local issues. In the runup to the 1924 elections, the SAP was losing one by-election after another.

In 2024, the country has, in its current constitutional form, only ever been governed by a single political party, the ANC. The country recently emerged from a pandemic, which the government likened to a war, resulting in a weakened economy and job losses. The governing party’s elite is quickly becoming disconnected from the real-life experiences of voters; Smuts’ opponents voiced the same criticism of him that Cyril Ramaphosa often has to face: that he lives in a different world from that of the voters. In many by-elections, ANC support is dwindling.

So what happened in the run-up to the 1924 elections?

That 1924 would be a tightly contested election was clear. Already in the 1915 general election, the National Party, under the leadership of JBM Hertzog, had secured 30 per cent of the vote as Afrikaners shifted their allegiance away from the South African Party led by Louis Botha and Smuts. By 1920, Hertzog’s party achieved a majority in both seats and votes, campaigning on a platform that advocated for republicanism and the establishment of separate school systems for Afrikaans- and English-speaking whites.

Smuts’ second term was heavily impacted by the economic repercussions of the First World War. The post-war economy struggled with prolonged disruptions. War reorients an economy towards military objectives. Although it can be an economic boon in the short term, peacetime often brings significant hardships, including fewer job opportunities as demobilised soldiers return to a job market filled by those who had temporarily taken their places. Although the economy grew by a remarkable 10.1% in 1919 (following the pandemic of 1918), it slumped by 11% in 1920! Add to this the rising influence of organised labour, inspired by the 1917 Russian Bolshevik Revolution, and struggling Afrikaner farmers migrating to the cities, and the scene was set for political revolution.

In April 1923, JBM Hertzog of the pro-Afrikaner National Party and Frederic Creswell of the Labour Party reached an electoral agreement. Both were opposed to Smuts’ violent repression of the 1922 miners’ strike on the Rand, where the Communist Party of South Africa marched under the slogan that ‘workers of the world’ should ‘unite for a white South Africa’. Both Hertzog and Creswell viewed Smuts as a tool for the capitalist class, protecting the interests of the mine owners instead of the mine workers. They were thus willing to set aside their mutual differences on constitutional matters to support each other’s candidates in the election.

Ultimately, the SAP won 47% of the vote in the election, with the National Party 35% and the Labour Party 14%. But because of the first-past-the-post electoral system, the National Party received 63 seats in parliament, with the South African Party only 53. A pact government between the National Party and Labour Party now allowed for a new economic strategy.

What was this strategy, and was it a success? I asked Emeritus Professor in History at Stellenbosch University Albert Grundlingh about the industrial policies implemented by the pact government, notably those aimed to empower working-class Afrikaners:

The initiatives were varied and not exclusively aimed at Afrikaners, though they also benefitted them. Some key measures included spending on public utilities like ISCOR and external marketing of fruit, dairy, and other products, supported by sea and land transport subsidies. There were also fiscal reliefs on imported fertilizers and farm implements. In addition to these developments, the introduction of agricultural credit associations under the Land Bank and work colonies for those in need of social rehabilitation were significant. Other measures included protecting white urban tenants against eviction during housing shortages, overhauling the law on miners’ phthisis, aligning the Factories Act with international standards concerning the work week length and child labour, as well as the enactment of the Wage Act of 1925 and the Colour Bar Act of 1926.

In short, they were largely successful in bringing about industrial peace and some material progress in the five years until the Great Depression of 1929 stalled further progress.

Although there are strong parallels between 1924 and 2024, there are also differences. The economic policies of the main opposition – the Democratic Alliance – have more in common with the ruling ANC than it wants to admit. The EFF and MK Party, the second and third largest contenders, if the polls are to be believed, share many similarities with the National Party and Labour Party of 1924: the critique of (neo)liberal capitalism, the nationalisation of mines and banks, and an active role for the state to boost wages and create jobs. But in contrast to 1924, they are expected to garner less than 25% of the vote combined, far from the threshold to create a modern version of the pact government.

What we do know is that the policy options for a new alliance – in whatever shape or size – are likely to be greater than they have been for the last thirty years. In an economy that has failed to grow for more than a decade, that may be good enough reason to say that ‘2024 is our 1924’.

An edited version of this post appeared (in Afrikaans) in Rapport on 5 May 2024. The image was created using Midjourney v6.