Millions of South
Africans are voting in what is expected to be the most pivotal general election
since the end of apartheid.
For months, polls have
shown the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party could
lose its majority for the first time since Nelson Mandela led it to
power in 1994.
While polling can be
challenging in South Africa, most analysts believe that the ANC faces its
stiffest challenge yet with a population deeply frustrated by the country’s
direction. If support for the ANC drops below 50% for the first time, the party
will be forced to enter into a coalition government.
ANC leader and South
African President Cyril Ramaphosa called Wednesday’s vote “one of the most
important elections in our nation’s history,” while addressing a crowd of
thousands at Soweto’s FNB soccer stadium on Saturday.
“Our people will
decide whether our country continues moving forward with the ANC towards a
better, brighter future or backwards to a terrible past,” Ramaphosa said.
South Africa is the
most unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank. Citizens are
also contending with the highest sustained rate of unemployment in the world,
rampant corruption, feeble economic growth, crippling power cuts and rising
violent crime.
Black South Africans,
who make up 81% of the population, are at the sharp end of this dire situation.
Unemployment and poverty remain concentrated in the Black majority, in large
part due to the failure
of public schooling, while most White South Africans have jobs and command
considerably higher wages.
There are 52 parties
on this election’s national ballot, including new parties formed by previous
ANC members such as former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK).
Zuma was forced
to resign
as president in 2018 and served a brief stint in jail in 2021 for
contempt of court. The 82-year-old was barred
from running for parliament last week after the country’s
Constitutional Court ruled that five years must have elapsed since the
completion of his sentence. However, his party will still contest the election
and his face will remain on the ballot.
Capping off a heated
few months of election campaigning, many of the largest parties held their
final rallies this weekend, including the Democratic Alliance (DA), the
official opposition party.
“On Wednesday, the ANC
will lose the outright majority it has abused for decades to subject the people
of this country to unemployment, corruption and misrule… we close the ANC
chapter of our history,” DA leader John Steenhuisen told supporters in the town
of Benoni, east of Johannesburg. The DA has formed a coalition bloc with
smaller opposition parties called the Multi-Party Charter.
This is the seventh
general election South Africa has held since the end of white minority rule 30
years ago. A record 27.79 million people are registered to vote – the highest
number to date, according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC.)
Source: CNN
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