I spent the past few days doing an enormous amount of data entry for a project related to the Anchor Town project for Solidariteit. Among the results was an unexpected consolidation of the Afrikaner numbers in the Northern and Eastern Cape provinces.

The semigration wave bringing Gautengers back to the Cape has reversed the trend of the previous decade (up to 2011), which saw many concentrating in the Gauteng metropoles. The last census in 2022 revealed a major drain from Gauteng, as well as from the neighbouring provinces, but a consolidation of Cape numbers.

And as ever, Limpopo remains unchanged by the flow of time.

Other things that leap out from the data include something that has long been obvious - that the constituencies have been drawn with the explicit purpose of disenfranchising Afrikaners in their entirety. There are no districts where Afrikaners constitute more than 22%, let alone a majority.

This is not the end of the world for minoritarian voters however, as some districts outside of the Cape, like uMngeni, have managed to carry a slim DA majority despite only 23% of their population being white, aided by the generally low black voter turnout.

What’s more, voting margins in several areas in the Northern Cape are slim, in raw numerical terms. Should only 17 000 Afrikaners move to the smallest municipalities, they could overturn majoritarian governance (ANC and allies) in these municipalities, and turn around the prospects for the Northern Cape and the Karoo.

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