With many a poll predicting that Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto Wesizwe party could win a not insignificant share of the vote on 29 May, there is a strong possibility of a new Parliament inhabited by both MK and the EFF -- and things get especially interesting if MK vaults into third position above Julius Malema's Red Berets.

A series of polls over the past few weeks indicated that uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK party) could become the third-biggest party in Parliament after the general election on 29 May. Some polls suggested that it could be the biggest party in KwaZulu-Natal, even if it wins just a quarter of the vote there.

It is worth injecting a note of caution here.

Polling is a relatively small industry in South Africa and several of the polls have been published by organisations which could be accused of bias.

At the same time, the best-resourced polling is done by the two biggest parties, the ANC and the DA. They do not make their polling public unless they feel there is a good political reason to do so.

ActionSA chair Michael Beaumont has a point when he suggests that a Brenthurst Foundation poll "paints the picture of a surging MKP at 13% -- a practical impossibility for a party whose support is almost entirely limited to KZN and Mpumalanga", and that this is "helpful to paint a narrative of DA growth and a useful stick to whip out the vote against the threat of a growing left alliance".

However, the fact is that...