Now that the dust has settled around the election and Jacob Zuma is safely in the presidency, “payback time” is the theme coming from the ANC Youth League and COSATU. These claims appear to be based on the widely accepted conventional wisdom that these two organisations “delivered” the ANC’s “landslide” victory in 2009. Yet there is little hard evidence in the election data to support the idea of the election being delivered by the youth or union members – and the data furthermore fails to support the widely accepted notion of an unusually large victory.
Read more on Reflections on Election 2009.