ANC

Former Mandela aide blames failures on the party and not apartheid for crime and millions of South Africans living in shacks and begging in the streets.

High jobless and crime rates, failing services, corruption, and an energy crisis have given impetus to a coalition seeking to oust the party after 30 years.

They say the governing parties have much in common, including corruption.

A South African revolutionary song calling for blacks to kill white farmers has fomented racial tensions in the lead-up to elections. The main political opposition party has complained to the United National Human Rights Council.

The incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC dropped below 60 percent for the first time.

As student unrest sweeps South Africa, the debate and discourse laid out in youthful pronouncements and Twitter feeds is increasingly racist.

On the surface, 2014 appears to represent “business as usual” for the landscape of South Africa’s electoral politics. The African National Congress (ANC) has secured a fifth straight victory in the latest national election.

Thomas Wolfe wrote “You Can’t Go Home Again” years ago, and its core truth keeps popping up in my life even as I tend to retrace some of my life journeys, in an endless walk down memory lane.

These are not the best of times in South Africa. It seems clear that there is fear and loathing everywhere as the press is packed with fresh allegations of corruption, and a restive mood spreads across the country.