It should be obvious to everyone that in our post-Nasrec dispensation, our politics is moving more quickly and even more chaotically than it has in the past. Events swirl around us and it is difficult to make any predictions. At the same time, an election is now possibly less than nine months away. That means, while predictions about margins of victory surely cannot yet be made, certain issues can be identified that could help determine what the results could be in 2019.

So much has changed in our politics since the last national elections in 2014. That time around, almost six months before the election, it was possible, through simple gut feel, to make a prediction and come pretty close. This time it would be foolish to feel certain about anything, let alone 2019 results.

This tells us much about how certain structures of our politics have almost fragmented since 2014, from Cosatu to parts of the ANC, and even, strangely, to parts of the DA. And of course the result at Nasrec, the election...