The main election day is Wednesday and people will vote in all nine provinces. It will decide the makeup of both the national and provincial legislatures. Some who have been granted special permission will vote earlier on Monday and Tuesday. Results are expected within days.
Nearly 28 million of the population of 62 million are registered to vote in what is only the country’s seventh fully democratic national election since apartheid was dismantled.
WHO IS RUNNING?
There are more than 50 political parties registered for the national election, the most ever, and even more for the provincial legislatures. Independent candidates will be allowed to stand for the first time.
The ANC’s fate is the headline story: Ramaphosa is the party’s leader and the face of its campaign. The main opposition is the centrist Democratic Alliance, or DA. It has entered into an agreement with some smaller parties in the hope that their combined vote might force the ANC out of government completely, but that’s not seen as likely to happen.
The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, or EFF, is the third biggest party and led by Julius Malema, a fiery former ANC youth leader.
The DA won around 20% in the last national election and the EFF 10% to the ANC’s 57.5%. Neither opposition party appears to have significantly increased in popularity.
That’s largely because of the dozens of other parties, many of them new, that have captured small shares. While 80% of South Africa’s population is Black, it is a multiracial society, with many ethnicities and 12 official languages. An equally diverse political picture is beginning to appear.
Of the new parties, the MK Party or uMkhonto weSizwe (which means Spear of the Nation) has gained the most attention because it is led by former South African President Jacob Zuma, who has turned his back on the ANC he once led in a bitter battle with Ramaphosa, the man who replaced him.
Zuma has been disqualified from standing as a candidate for Parliament but can still campaign for his party.
WHAT ARE THE BIG ISSUES?
Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people. While South Africa is regarded as Africa’s most advanced country, its contradictions are stark. It also has an unemployment rate of 32% — ranked the highest in the world — and more than half of South Africans are living in poverty, according to the World Bank.
That has driven most of the discontent as millions of the poor Black majority feel the ANC has not improved their lives sufficiently three decades after apartheid, which brutally oppressed Black people in favor of the white minority.
Other prominent election issues that are seen as pushing voters away from the ANC are the high rate of violent crime, multiple government corruption scandals over the years, the failure of some basic government services and a crisis within the state-owned electricity supplier that has led to nationwide blackouts at regular intervals to conserve power. The blackouts have eased ahead of the election but they angered people and further damaged a struggling economy.
