MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, a smoking ban in public spaces takes effect in New York City today. Should it be coming soon to a park near you?

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut first, last Wednesday, South Africa held countrywide municipal elections. But coming to grips with the legacy of apartheid may mean the weakening of the party, which overcame apartheid, The African National Congress or ANC. Another party has also created what seems to be a permanent foothold in South African politics.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe Democratic Alliance is making relative slow but steady gains under its leader, Helen Zille, who is white. Here to discuss the election and the impact of race in post-apartheid politics, joining us in studio is Loren Landau. He is director of the African Center for Migration and Society at the University of Wits in Johannesburg. Loren Landau, thank you for joining us.

MR. LOREN LANDAUIt's my pleasure, thank you.

NNAMDIJoining us by phone from Cape Town, South Africa is John Allen. He is the managing editor of AllAfrica.com. John Allen, thank you for joining us.

MR. JOHN ALLENIt's good to be with you, thank you.

NNAMDIJohn Allen, first, talk about the results of these elections, exactly what kinds of elections they were, the municipal elections, and the significance of the result.

ALLENWell, as with municipal elections in many areas of the world, what's expected that initially in the normal run-of-the-mill that you wouldn't have such high participation in the election. However, they became quite controversial and the subject of quite strong conversation in the country.

ALLENMainly a consequence of two things, first be the African National Congress has been under pressure from its own supporters and from a support base among the poor due to failure in what people in South Africa call service delivery. The delivery of basic services to townships and decent housing, that kind of very local issue.

ALLENAnd the second was a strong bid by the Democratic Alliance under it's relatively new leader, Helen Zille, to try to make inroads as a consequence of the pressure the ANC's been under.

NNAMDIWell, have inroads been made? The ANC won these elections with, it is my understanding, about 60 percent of the overall vote?

ALLENYes, over 60 percent. A few percentage points of a loss compared to previously but still a pretty substantial win. The Democratic Alliance gained a fair number of votes, an increase from about 15 percent of the vote to 22 percent of the vote.

ALLENBut it has to be said that the ANC brought out its vote, many of its voters, who, some of the voters were expected to stay away and (unintelligible) brought out the vote. They didn't lose as much as many people expected and the Democratic Alliance's increase in votes is very largely against other opposition voters. Voting on the basis of identity remained in which it has been in South Africa since democracy, which democracy liberation was achieved 17 years ago.

NNAMDILoren Landau, what do you take away from this election? That voting on the basis of identity and, I presume by that, John Allen means racial identity is still the norm?

LANDAUWell, I think that there are a few issues. I mean, it's very easy to make a race issue and clearly identity politics is and will always remain very strong in South Africa. I think there are very deep frustrations with how the ANC has managed service delivery, the urbanization process, what's happened there.

LANDAUBut I think that if we are going to see a real opposition that's going to be a threat to ANC's party dominance, it's going to come from within the ANC itself. A few years ago we saw a small splintered party come off, COP...

NNAMDICOP, the Congress of the People.

LANDAUYes, from the ANC and that was many people's expectation that was that would a kind of black-based opposition. They didn't go very far. They sort of did themselves in through in fighting and that's left the ANC to really dominate what is the majority of the population.

NNAMDIAnd the emergence of the Democratic Alliance under Helen Zille, as John Allen pointed out, it was expected in some quarters that it would probably do better in these municipal elections than it actually did. But why is it emerging as a rising force?

LANDAUWell, I think as you mentioned it's helped consolidate a lot of the opposition to the ANC. This is a very local election and I think what we have to see here is that this a sign that people are not ready to throw out the ANC from national level. But they're willing to send the ANC a message at the local level to say we're dissatisfied.

LANDAUAnd so the DA has been some support at the local level. There's some evidence that they do at managing municipalities to some extent. And I think what we're seeing here is them consolidating their position as an opposition. But that's an opposition that will only ever gain probably 25 percent of the population.

NNAMDIIf you'd like to join this conversation, you can call us at 800-433-8850. 800-433-8850 or you can send e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. You can join the conversation at our website, kojoshow.org. What do you see is the significance of the recent South Africa municipal election? Do you feel that the ANC is losing any influence and if so why or why not? 800-433-8850. John Allen, the Democratic Alliance ran on a theme of delivery for all. What does that mean?

ALLENWell, an example would be well what they say they deliver and their claim is they took Cape Town in the Cape region from the ANC in the last election and they published booklets, they published research which say, as has been indicated, that they run areas better.

ALLENThat in Cape Town is the subject of the vigorous dispute. People in poor black areas would dispute whether they do provide better services or not. And it's a very little detailed empirical has been established with...

NNAMDIWell, allow me to interrupt for a second and...

ALLENYes?

NNAMDI...you can begin to explain to our listeners what the toilet wars have to do with all of this. Better you than me. Go ahead, please.

ALLENThe toilet war was -- by the end of the election it was being suggested in the media that this was the toilet war election. It began when a local poor community in Cape Town wanted better sanitation and the municipal authority indicated that they didn't have enough money to supply toilets in enclosed facilities for the area though the suggestion was that they could toilets but the local community would need to enclose the toilet.

ALLENWell, that was -- that provided by the Democratic Alliance controlled council. What happened is that then there was a dispute about the kind of enclosures in which would be erected around the toilets. They weren't erected -- there were toilets sitting in the area without an enclosure. If people wanted to use them, they were out in the open exposed to everybody and, of course, that was very unpopular with the local community.

ALLENThe Democratic Alliance threw, what I imagine they would, secretly, between , regard as a huge political mistake, had entered into a commitment which really gave the ANC a win in that area over them. And then you began to have evidence emerge like towards the end of the election that there was a small community, a much smaller community, in another province of the country, the free state, in a community ruled by the ANC where you had exactly the same thing, toilets being erected, but there were no enclosures put around them.

ALLENAnd so that became -- it became a flashpoint. It was -- it gave the ANC a major stick to beat the Democratic Alliance with, to say they didn't care about poor people, that they were racist. That black people were given toilets without enclosures. It was a demeaning way in which (unintelligible) .

NNAMDIAnd John Allen that undermined the Democratic Alliance in a way because getting back to the theme of its campaign, delivery for all, the Democratic Alliance is hoping to make inroads based on service delivery in South Africa, is it not? That's for you, John.

ALLENYes...

NNAMDII'm sorry. I meant for Loren Landau. Loren, go ahead, please.

LANDAUYes, I mean, I think that it did. Although, from what I understand, the backlash, this sort of discovery late in the game that the ANC was also doing this, ultimately was -- at least the DA seems to have presented it as, well, look, this is how everyone does it and it didn't hurt them so much in the election.

LANDAUI think what's probably hurt them, the DA, is the ANC's insistence that only they can represent the majority black population. The DA has made this an easy argument to make, given that most of their senior leadership is white and they've not been able to bring in senior black candidates in many places.

LANDAUAnd I think that this something that we have to look at very carefully in the future. If the ANC tries to maintain its position as being the only true leader of the population, that's probably what's more unhealthy for the population, for the democracy in the long-term.

NNAMDISince the country essentially functions as a one-party state, at least that's the view from over here, one might expect a certain amount of dissatisfaction particularly in the poor communities over the performance of the ANC. And it would appear that that was considered to be a factor in this election. Apparently, it was not. Tell us about the level of disillusionment with the ANC in some of the poor areas of the country? First you, Loren?

LANDAUWell, I think for a lot of people in South Africa, voting against the ANC is almost unfathomable. The ANC was the liberation party and as long they remember that process they're going to stick with ANC. That doesn't mean there's not great dissatisfaction.

LANDAUAlmost every year we go into a season starting about now where we see mass protests, sometimes very violent protests, against ANC leadership and against leadership from other parties because people haven't gotten the jobs, the services, the water, whatever schools it is that they think they deserve.

LANDAUAnd I think that's something that we need to watch out, is there a way that people can express their dissatisfaction if they're not prepared to vote for another party?

NNAMDIJohn Allen, care to comment on that?

ALLENYes, I think that as the degree of disillusionment with the ruling party among its support bases indicated by the fact that in eight of nine provinces in the country the ANC's lost its vote, lost a share of the vote. That's a repetition of what we saw 2009 in the national elections. It was exactly the same thing. In eight of nine the ANC lost its vote.

ALLENAnd it managed to hold its losses both in the 2009 national elections and in the municipal elections last week, only through a massive increase in the proportion of the vote that it received in Quazulu Natal, which of course, is the home province of the President Jacob Zuma. So if one puts this in a wider African content we're very soon going to be 20 years away from liberation.

ALLEN1994 was our first democratic country, marks the political liberation of the country and so we're soon going to be 20 years down the line. And if you compare with other countries in Africa, look at Ghana and Kuma's party, look at Kenya -- was a Kenyan African National Union of Chairman Kenyatta.

ALLENIt -- now those liberation parties, 40, 50 years after they became free are nowhere to be seen. Parts of the party have split, become involved in a wider realignment. So I think that perhaps we're beginning to see -- we've seen the beginnings of that happening in relation to the ANC.

ALLENThe reason that's its unthinkable for many black South Africans and older black South Africans to vote -- not to be voting for the ANC -- the reason that's unthinkable and that they would perhaps rather stay away from the polls than vote for the DA with its identification with white and now minority black community interests, is that they were party, it's the party of Mandela.

ALLENZille visited Mandela the day before the election at his home and they gave great publicity for it and came out saying Mandela still votes the ANC, drawing, appropriating the Mandela legacy. But increasingly you find younger black South Africans, the born-frees, as the marketers call them, people born after liberation or certainly people who grew up after liberation who's not know any other government in their adult life than the ANC, the whole -- that the party has on those people, the automatic polls, which involves identity politics, as we call it here, the racial identity politics.

ALLENThat hold that the ANC has on people must naturally follow as they become an ordinary political party, (word?) compete for others for votes.

NNAMDILoren Landau, in considering the Arab Spring movement, we can see that social media played a prominent role in mobilizing people who might not otherwise be politically active that sites like Twitter or Facebook or any other social media impact this election at all?

LANDAUWell, it's hard to know. I think that Internet access is fairly limited for many people, especially the kind of poor South Africans who really came out to vote in support of the ANC. That said, almost everyone has cell phones and SMS text messages, all everywhere. And I fully suspect that the ANC, using their extensive branch network in the townships elsewhere use those media to try to mobilize the support that they got.

NNAMDIBack to the possibility of racial conflict in South Africa, John Allen, the Independent Election Commission, which ensures the freedom of elections in South Africa. In the Eastern Cape, one IEC official said there was the potential for elections to create a blood bath. What was that official talking about?

ALLENI'm not sure that that's representative picture. There were some threats of violence in some parts of the country. In the Eastern Cape, the ANC is very unpopular in certain areas of its failures, particularly in the education system. It's been a stronghold of how (unintelligible) the Congress of the People, the opposition party, which was crashed as of election because of its infighting, which is -- which has already being referred to.

ALLENI'm not sure, I -- the comments I've seen on the election since it happened, in the Eastern Cape as elsewhere is that it was -- it really was a very peaceful election. And all was well for democracy in the future.

NNAMDIThe Democratic Alliances leader, Helen Zille, is a former journalist and former anti-apartheid activist. She is white. What impact does her race as opposed to her qualifications as an anti-apartheid activist have on her being able to attract voters? This is for you, Loren Landau.

LANDAUI think it's definitely limited, the scope of the party. She doesn't have the way that the president, Jacob Zuma, has an immediate rapport with a lot of black South Africans she's not been able to establish. She's been criticized for her dancing. I mean, here, we saw the first lady dancing and doing a very good job of it. I think Helen Zille's dancing was less impressive. But she has not been able to reach a kind of mass audience.

NNAMDIHow well known, how widespread is her reputation as an anti-apartheid activist?

LANDAUI think no one questions her commitment to the country. I think the D.A. has been very clear that they're concerned with some degree of economic transformation and social justice. She's known for that, but I think in the end she has been very successful at labeling the D.A. and the D.A. hasn't helped itself as a white party that represents business interests, elite interests and largely white interests.

NNAMDIJohn Allen, same question to you. The reputation of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, Helen Zille.

ALLENHer reputation probably goes back among small circles, journalists and academics from the late 1970s, where, for example, she did an extraordinary job in covering for the former liberal newspaper which was closed down in the mid-'80s (unintelligible). She covered probably, no individual journalist did more to cover the detail of the inquest into the killing by police, by security police of Steve Biko in 1977.

ALLENSo she has a reputation, but it's among quite a small circle of being a journalist with enormous commitment and really a very hard worker. She then went more into the academic field and she did work in the early '90s in Cape Town in brokering an end to taxi violence when I was working for Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the time. And she was on the phone with me because she had known me as a journalist.

ALLENShe was on the phone to me at 11:00 at night, passionately concerned that people were going to die in strife between the leaders of different taxi organizations. It was really an economic struggle of the taxi roots in the black community at the time. But as we already heard, I think certainly people could question her commitment. But the problem is, just quite frankly speaking, and I speak as a white South African myself, she is white.

ALLENAnd in a country in which white rule has been associated with oppression for generations, but I remember seeing her in Parliament a number of years ago acting as a (unintelligible) opposition politician attacking the education minister. Well, the education minister at that stage was a woman named (unintelligible). Her father had been a Cabinet minister from (unintelligible) Freedom Party, which is the Nationalist Party.

NNAMDIMm-hmm.

ALLENThe grandfather had been one of seven of East Africa's leading academics in the 1940s and '50s and was responsible for the ANC. He was an ANC leader and responsible for the ANC, calling one of its crucial policy conferences, that historic policy conferences in the '50s. And as she was -- as I saw her attacking the education minister, you know, I wanted to say to her that you look like an angry white madam, lecturing a black person.

ALLENAnd from an image point of view, it's just disastrous. I think it's unfortunate. We aspire to be a non-racial society. But the reality is that the D.A. has not the potential to grow much beyond its current position. It's seen as the party of the privileged, a party which seeks to hold on to privilege and to preserve privilege. And until there's a split in the ANC and until the DA may well, and Helen Zille, go into an alliance with a sort of break away party from the ANC.

ALLENAnd then they have a chance to combine with another party. But until have black leadership in a significant proportion of votes coming out of the black community from other forces other than the D.A. current vote base, I don't think you can expect much change.

NNAMDILoren Landau, this election in the minds of some people served as a kind of bellwether for the next presidential election and the way in which the ANC came out of this, it would seem, on the surface, that President Jacob Zuma is not likely to have a lot of problems in the next election.

LANDAUI don't think there was any debate that the ANC would win the next election, whether it's under Jacob Zuma or someone else should they choose to run another candidate. I guess the question really is whether the ANC has the legitimacy to say that they reflect the whole population, that they reflect the interest of the poor. Now I think what we see here with some community sending a signal that they don't feel the ANC is completely on their side and that the ANC needs to be a bit more careful with how they address the poor, newly urbanized populations, townships across the country.

NNAMDIWill the Democratic Alliance or any other party for that matter likely fill the presidential candidates in the next election?

LANDAUOh, they undoubtedly filled one. And I would expect that they'll get about the same percentage of the vote that they got this time around.

NNAMDIJohn Allen, same question to you.

ALLENYes, I'd agree with the answer.

NNAMDIOkay. Well, John Allen, thank you so much for joining us.

ALLENIt's a pleasure.

NNAMDIJohn Allen is the managing director of AllAfrica.com. He joined us by telephone from Cape Town, South Africa. Loren Landau, thank you for joining us.

LANDAUIt's been a pleasure, thank you.

NNAMDILoren is director of the African Center for Migration and Society at the University of Wits in Johannesburg. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, a smoking ban in public spaces takes effect in New York City today. Should it be soon coming to a park or to a beach, for that matter, near you? You can call us, 800-433-8850. It'll be your turn. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.