Johannesburg — THE greatest danger of the 2009 general election is that the parties will misconstrue the results.

The results, to my mind, show the following trends. First, the African National Congress (ANC) in effect swapped its support among middle class black voters for greater penetration in rural KwaZulu-Natal.

In 1994, the ANC won only 47% of the vote in KwaZulu- Natal and this time it won as many votes in the recalcitrant province as it typically wins in most others.

The big loser here was, as expected, Inkatha, which went from 34% of the vote in that province to about 20%.

Presumably the obvious Zulu ethnicity of president-elect Jacob Zuma played a big role in this victory. But how much?

It's worth remembering that Inkatha has gone from 48%, to 40% to 34% to about 20% of the vote in the past four elections.

Consequently, you have to say, the ANC's victory in KwaZulu- Natal also has a lot to do with Inkatha's decline as a political force -- and that presumably has a lot to do with its moribund leadership structure and inability to transform itself into a national political force.

The second trend is the marginal shift away from the ANC generally.

The absorption by the ANC of much of the Inkatha vote disguises the extent to which it has lost ground around the country. Without this big slice of votes gained in SA's most populous province, the ANC's gradually, incrementally fading popularity would have been much more distinct.

How much should we read into this marginal trend?

I think not much. This was an unusual and special election in many ways, and despite its victory, the ANC was a bit on the back foot for most of the campaign.

If it's true that the shift away from the ANC is perceptible, then SA is still faced with what might be described as a democratic deficit.

The term "democratic deficit" is normally associated with the European Union, which has a parliament and elections and the whole façade of an electoral process.

But everybody knows the main decisions are made by the leaders of the body sitting together.

Consequently, the union struggles to achieve political credibility for its decisions; hence the democratic deficit.

In SA, it takes a different form. This election demonstrated once again that past affiliations rather than new ideas are what win elections, something both the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA) depressingly recogni sed early: the ANC by ignoring policy issues and the DA by focusing on issues of personality.

Not only did the parties not even try to present even a smidgeon of policy creativity in the campaign, but neither the journalists covering the election nor the commentariat particularly pressed them to reveal their positions.

Incredibly, the leader of the winning party could not even tell us whether he supported the rapid transport initiative his own party had decided to implement.

The third trend was the gradual disintegration of smaller parties.

The Independent Democrats went from 1,7% of the vote, to 1,2%. The United Democratic Movement went from 2,3% to 0,9%. The African Christian Democratic Party went from 1,6% to 0,8%.

Only the Freedom Front Plus managed to maintain its small foothold on public popularity.

Why are the small parties losing out? The most obvious reason is that the small parties seem to have lost big slices of their vote to the Congress of the People (COPE). But there is another reason too.

The larger parties have managed to skew the funding process in their favour, and this is gradually eating away at the power of the small parties to sustain themselves.

Their choices now are stark: join together, join COPE or face obliteration -- or try to change the funding system, and the best of luck with that, since the ANC is never going to give up a system which favours it so heavily.

So what does this mean for the parties' possible misinterpretation of their successes and failures?

For the ANC, the danger is that the party interprets the results as an indication that the corruption that now permeates the party is not an electoral issue.

Given that the ANC came so close in proportional terms to its 2004 result, it would be easy to conclude that people don't really care about corruption.

Hennie van Vuuren, head of the corruption and governance programme at the Institute of Security Studies in Cape Town, points out that strengthening the Scorpions was part of the ANC's People's Contract.

That organi sation is now decimated, and the number of investigators examining the admission by British arms dealers that they paid off ANC bigwigs has apparently been cut to three people.

Yet the power of corruption is an insidious thing. It doesn't exist until it totally overwhelms.

If the ANC does not control corruption, the party will die. It might take longer than people think, it might take the country down with it, but it will eventually happen. Ask the National Party.

For the DA, the danger is that it will interpret its gains overall and victory in the Western Cape as an indication that the party has broken out of its suburban enclave.

For example in 1999, the New National Party and the DA won 6,87% and 9,59% of the votes respectively. This adds up to 16,46%, just a tiny slice less than the 16,7% the DA collected this year.

The party can congratulate itself for developing into a really credible opposition and galvanising the opposition vote; but it has a long way to go before it can describe itself as truly broad-based.

For COPE, I think the results are a disappointment, but that is not the most dangerous thing.

The danger for the party is to believe this 7,4% of the vote constitutes a real purchase on popular support.

The fatuous newspaper headlines all claim "the work now begins" -- referring to the ANC and government.

But actually this is more true for COPE than for any other party. Of all the parties, COPE really has the potential to develop and flourish.

But if it fails to take advantage of this opportunity - a tendency the party has demonstrated during the election campaign - it will disintegrate quickly.

Its position is much more vulnerable than party members think.