Two elections, held a day apart on opposite sides of the Atlantic, have delivered the same blunt message. Voters are neither as forgetful nor as forgiving as the powerful like to believe.
In the US, Donald Trump’s Republicans were routed in Tuesday’s midterms. The Democrats seized the House of Representatives and the Senate, flipping seats in states such as Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Ohio that Republicans had long treated as their own. Two years ago Trump had it all: the White House, the popular vote and both chambers of Congress. This week that all collapsed.
A day later, South Africans went to the polls and handed the ANC its worst municipal battering since the dawn of democracy. With most votes counted, the governing party was hovering around 32% nationally, down from 45.6% in 2021 and from almost 65% at its peak in 2011. Provisional results show it trailing the DA in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, and the MK Party in eThekwini.
The two parties could hardly be more different. The lessons are the same.
Start with the economy. Americans voted with their wallets. Prices stayed high, tariffs pushed up costs and the war Trump launched against Iran in February sent petrol prices soaring. At home, unemployment remains a national emergency. Households squeezed by food, electricity and transport costs have stopped believing promises of a turnaround.
Then there is war. The Iran adventure, fought far away but paid for at the petrol pump, became a referendum on judgment. Voters rarely punish a leader for one bad decision. They punish him when it reaches their wallets.
Next, arrogance. Trump governed as though his 2024 mandate were a blank cheque. The ANC behaved as though liberation credentials guaranteed loyalty forever. When polls showed its support slipping below 30%, its secretary-general dismissed them as manipulative. The voters have answered him.
Finally, the everyday failures that no slogan can paper over. In municipality after municipality, residents live with taps that run dry, sewage in the streets, potholes that swallow tyres, uncollected rubbish and electricity cut off by councils that cannot pay Eskom. Add tender looting, cadre deployment and officials who never face consequences, and the outcome was inevitable.
Corruption, too, crossed the ocean. American voters named it alongside the economy and the war. The new Democratic majority has the power to investigate. For the ANC, state capture, the PPE scandals and municipal heists have hardened into a reputation it cannot shake.
There is a warning here for the winners as well. The DA, ActionSA, the MK Party and whatever coalitions take shape in our metros have not been handed a blank cheque. They have been lent votes by angry citizens. Johannesburg and Tshwane have endured years of chaotic coalitions, revolving-door mayors and budgets held hostage to backroom bargaining. If the new arrangements repeat that circus, voters will turn on them. The same holds for the Democrats in Washington. Democracy’s great strength is that it gives citizens the power to fire those who fail them.
- Two elections, held a day apart on opposite sides of the Atlantic, have delivered the same blunt message.
- Voters are neither as forgetful nor as forgiving as the powerful like to believe.
- In the US, Donald Trump’s Republicans were routed in Tuesday’s midterms.
- The Democrats seized the House of Representatives and the Senate, flipping seats in states such as Texas, Kansas, Iowa and Ohio that Republicans had long treated as their own.
- Two years ago Trump had it all: the White House, the popular vote and both chambers of Congress.
