South Africa\u2019s ruling African National Congress party is set to fall short of a majority\u00a0for the first time in 30 years after national elections this week, marking the biggest political shift in the country since the end of apartheid. <\/p>\n
With counting nearly complete support for the ANC was at just over 40%, a huge slump from the 57.5% it received in the last election. <\/p>\n
The official opposition party, the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), had about 22% of the vote. <\/p>\n
Behind them were two ANC splinter parties: the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK), led by Zuma, had nearly 15% of the vote, and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) had nearly 10%, data from the country\u2019s electoral commission showed. <\/p>\n
Fed-up voters\u00a0dealt the party of Nelson Mandela a seismic blow at the polls after\u00a0years of corruption scandals and economic mismanagement.\u00a0\u00a0As a result,\u00a0the ANC will be forced to form a coalition to govern\u00a0the world\u2019s most unequal country. <\/p>\n
Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa and the ANC \u2013 and once Mandela\u2019s favorite to succeed him as leader \u2013 promised a \u201cnew dawn\u201d when he took over in 2018 from disgraced former president Jacob Zuma. <\/p>\n
But many feel those promises never\u00a0materialized\u00a0and the\u00a0election\u00a0results reflect\u00a0a population deeply frustrated with the country\u2019s direction. South Africans could now face weeks of political uncertainty, as the ANC seeks to strike a coalition deal with former rivals. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0rebuke to the ANC\u00a0was hardly unexpected,\u00a0mirroring widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling party.\u00a0But the scale of the losses surprised some. <\/p>\n
There has been \u201ca general arrogance and loss of connection with the general voter from the ANC side,\u201d Verwoerd said, adding that parties like MK and the EFF have capitalized on\u00a0that discontent. <\/p>\n
Zuma \u2013 a fierce critic of Ramaphosa \u2013 was forced to\u00a0resign as leader in 2018\u00a0and served a brief stint in jail in 2021 for contempt of court.\u00a0The Constitutional Court barred the\u00a082-year-old\u00a0\u00a0from running for parliament\u00a0in May, but\u00a0his face remained on the MK party ballot. <\/p>\n
Substantial bargaining will likely begin once the final results are declared.\u00a0Political parties will have two weeks to form a coalition government before a new parliament must convene to elect the nation\u2019s president.\u00a0If they fail, new elections will need to be held. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is their spinelessness to deal with the prospect of Mr. Zuma and his sins of omission and commission that has led to him being a political force now that has come and wiped them out in places like KwaZulu-Natal and other parts of the country.\u201d <\/p>\n
The populous coastal eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, where the major city of Durban is located, has traditionally been a stronghold of the conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). <\/p>\n
Zuma has faced\u00a0hundreds of corruption, fraud and racketeering charges\u00a0over the years. He has always denied all of them and became known as the \u201cTeflon President\u201d because few politicians could have survived the scandals he has faced and weathered. <\/p>\n
What he labels a \u201cdoomsday coalition\u201d is one of the other options on the table: a deal between the ANC-EFF\u00a0or\u00a0even\u00a0the\u00a0MK. <\/p>\n
But with such disdain inside those breakaway parties for\u00a0Ramaphosa, it would be quite some negotiation. <\/p>\n
The EFF is led by\u00a0former ANC youth leader Julius Malema. It espouses the expropriation of land without compensation and sweeping state nationalism.\u00a0The MK party\u2019s manifesto\u00a0holds\u00a0broadly\u00a0similar ideas and demands\u00a0an overhaul of the country\u2019s constitution\u00a0to restore more powers to traditional leaders. <\/p>\n
Not since the dawn of democracy in 1994 has South Africa\u2019s political landscape been so unclear. <\/p>\n
But\u00a0some analysts believe \u2013 despite the uncertainty \u2013\u00a0that\u00a0the results of this election could be a win for democracy. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u00a0is probably a maturity in the democracy, we needed change and it is never good to have such a one-party dominance in a country,\u201d Verwoerd said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt might be a little bit more unstable as we go into the future. But for\u00a0democracy\u2019s\u00a0sake, it is most probably a good thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said that the ANC\u2019s prospects dropped dramatically under the previous president. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce the Jacob Zuma years happened, it became pretty inevitable that there was going to be a slide,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
The ANC swept to power in 1994 on a\u00a0pledge\u00a0<\/strong>to \u201cbuild a better life for all,\u201d winning almost 63% of the vote in the country\u2019s first democratic election. <\/p>\n Fast forward three decades and rampant corruption, soaring joblessness, crippling\u00a0power cuts,\u00a0and feeble economic growth are severely impacting South Africans. <\/p>\n The economy has gone backward over the past decade, evidenced by a sharp fall in living standards. According to the\u00a0World Bank, gross domestic product per capita has fallen from a peak in 2011, leaving the average South African 23% poorer. <\/p>\n South Africa has the highest rate of unemployment in the world, according to\u00a0the\u00a0World Bank. \u00a0Inequality is also the world\u2019s worst. <\/p>\n 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\u00a0failure of public schooling, while most White South Africans have jobs and command considerably higher wages. <\/p>\n Any coalition government will\u00a0be a bitter pill to swallow for the ANC and Ramaphosa,\u00a0who could soon be fighting for his political life. <\/p>\n Leading analysts believe that the ANC was depending on its legacy too much. <\/p>\n \u201cThe ANC was campaigning on three decades of its existence. But nobody was looking at the current president,\u201d said TK Pooe, a senior lecturer at Wits School of Governance in Johannesburg. He believes Ramaphosa is \u201cunder pressure\u201d. <\/p>\n Pooe said, with this election, voters have told the ANC three things: \u201cjobs, jobs, jobs.\u201d <\/p>\n Whether a coalition government can deliver for the people is deeply uncertain, but one thing is clear:\u00a0South Africa and the ANC \u2013 Mandela\u2019s former liberation movement that triumphed over apartheid \u2013 will never be the same. <\/p>\n\n South Africa\u2019s ruling African National Congress party is set to fall short of a majority\u00a0for the first time in 30 years after national elections this week, marking the biggest political shift in the country since the end of apartheid. With counting nearly complete support for the ANC was at just over 40%, a huge slump <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19870,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}