This is a paid article which your subscription is allowing you to read. Increasingly, political data on KwaZulu-Natal show that the province is politically different from the rest of the country. From leader favourabilities and voting intentions to the straight-up question of seceding from the broader union, the province is showing a wide set of green-shoot markers that it may, in time, look to branch off on its own.

Start with leader favourability. In South Africa as a whole, Jacob Zuma, the purported fiend of state capture, has a favourability score of 26% and an unfavourability score of 56%. In practice, what this means is that a quarter of people like and respect the guy, and more than half think he is really bad news.

But in KwaZulu-Natal, that is inverted. There, 50% feel favourably towards him and 37% do not.

On President Cyril Ramaphosa in KwaZulu-Natal, 61% of people judge him to be corrupt and a criminal. Nationally, the number is 44%.

In terms of voting intention in KwaZulu-Natal, support for  the  uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) stands at 46% and has fallen to 13% for the African National Congress (ANC). The national picture is again somewhat inverted, with MKP at 15% and the ANC on 34%.

In KwaZulu-Natal, 47% of people said life would get better if the Democratic Alliance was pushed out of the Government of National Unity and replaced with the MKP, and only 33% said it would get worse. Nationally, that number split 27% versus 51%.

These data are all drawn from second-quarter polls conducted by The Common Sense and the Social Research Foundation (SRF) and are set out graphically on the chart below:

The meaning in those numbers becomes much greater when read against 2023 data produced by the SRF that tested whether it would be best if KwaZulu-Natal formally broke away from South Africa to secede and become a country on its own.

The result there was that 51% of all KwaZulu-Natal voters supported secession, with 42% opposed. Support among Indian South Africans was particularly strong, splitting 60% to 24% in favour of seceding.

Frans Cronje told The Common Sense, “What we are seeing in the data for KwaZulu-Natal is very interesting. It is a key set of trends that we have leaned on in developing the broader thesis that the break-up of the old 1910
Union of South Africa is now the single most important social and political trend shaping South Africa. I think for anyone who knows the place, they understand that it is already in many respects breaking away from the authority of Pretoria. The riots of a few years ago were an important accelerant for that, and the coming-apart of the ANC and the ensuing weakness of the government in the Union Buildings is allowing that same trend to continue accelerating. There is not a formal secession on the near horizon, but more a de facto one. But in the fullness of time, if the national economy does not grow, and the ANC comes apart more, then maybe KwaZulu-Natal does break
away formally. To the Cape secessionists, I have always said the road to what you want leads through Ulundi. That is what we are seeing in much of the current KwaZulu-Natal data.”