JOHANNESBURG—South Africa votes next on May 29 in an election analysts expect to be the most significant since the country’s first multiracial poll in 1994.
All the numbers are indicating that the socialist African National Congress (ANC) will lose the majority it has held since Nelson Mandela swept to power 30 years ago to end decades of white minority rule.
The ANC, fresh from a victorious battle against apartheid that made it popular globally, was united then. Under the calm leadership of a human rights icon, the party appeared dedicated to nurturing a better, more equal society.
Mandela signed into law a constitution lauded as one of the most progressive in the world. It entrenched a strong central government based on majority rule, and it guaranteed the rights of minorities and freedom of expression.
Mandela, whom the white nationalist state had imprisoned for 27 years, was praised for his efforts at reconciliation, going out of his way to make sure that white citizens felt welcomed and appreciated in a “New South Africa,” a country described by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu as the “Rainbow Nation.”
Mandela rolled out a Reconstruction and Development Program that gave jobs, land, housing, water, electricity, telecommunications, and transport to black people who had been neglected under apartheid.
But behind the scenes, the rot was setting in.
High-level ANC officials were implicated in multibillion-dollar corruption scandals, and evidence emerged of party bigwigs’ siphoning off large sums of money from government contracts.
“Mandela was a good man, with good intentions, but he was blind to the faults of his comrades,” Tony Leon, who led the opposition to the ANC in parliament in the 1990s, told The Epoch Times.
“I went to Mandela many times to tell him, ‘Nelson; your people are stealing.’ But every time, he just waved me away, saying: ‘If there are any problems in the ANC, I’ll deal with them. Leave my people alone.’
“He never cracked down, so the ANC became increasingly corrupt to the point where it now resembles an organized crime syndicate, not a political party. History shows that Mandela was a good president, but the disease definitely began during his leadership.”
South Africa’s economy grew to be the most prosperous in Africa under Thabo Mbeki, a technocrat who’d spent much of his life in exile in the UK and who succeeded Mandela in 1999.
Mr. Mbeki, an economist, was the architect of the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution macroeconomic policy that proposed a set of medium-term strategies aimed at the rapid liberalization of the South African economy.
Foreign investment poured into South Africa, Mr. Mbeki’s sensible economic policies sparking growth and financial stability. But they also sparked opposition within the ANC.
His intellectualism and pragmatism were despised by a baser, more traditional faction within the party.
They labeled him a “pipe-smoking, poetry-reading, clever black” who was kowtowing to the West and its financial institutions.
They made no secret of wanting to get rid of his officials, who mostly kept tight control of taxpayer rands.
Mr. Mbeki was admired globally for his vision of an “African Renaissance,” but vilified for refusing to provide lifesaving antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to millions of his compatriots infected with HIV based on his unscientific premise that the virus did not cause AIDS and that ARVs were “poison.”
Hundreds of thousands died before a court order forced the president to give the medicines to his people.
Mr. Mbeki also purged government institutions of critics, interfered with the justice system, and, like Mandela, protected corrupt officials from investigation.
His enemies used these and other failures to oust him as party leader in late 2007.
The ANC replaced him with someone who was Mr. Mbeki’s complete antithesis: Jacob Zuma, a former liberation fighter with no formal education, a Zulu traditionalist and populist who appeared at functions clad only in a loincloth and leopard skin, toting a spear and shield; a polygamist with numerous wives and scores of children; and a man who’d just been found not guilty on a technicality of raping a friend’s young daughter.
Mr. Zuma’s pledge was to “give the ANC and South Africa back to the people” and to use the party’s Black Economic Empowerment policies to lift millions out of poverty.
But he did the opposite.
Under Mr. Zuma, government services crumbled, eroded by corruption and mismanagement. Poverty and inequality worsened. Almost all state-owned companies went bankrupt.
Cyril Ramaphosa, a former trade unionist turned super-rich businessman, ousted Mr. Zuma in 2018 and was elected president in 2019 on a wave of optimism.
The veteran ANC activist who helped draft South Africa’s first democratic constitution promised to “renew” the party and South Africa using “clean, effective governance.”
Mr. Ramaphosa acknowledged that some ANC officials were “criminals” and promised to rid the party of all of them.
But few have been charged. Those who have are almost exclusively allies of Mr. Zuma’s, and many allegedly corrupt officials remain in high positions, including Mr. Ramaphosa’s deputy.
Under Mr. Ramaphosa, unemployment, poverty, inequality, violent crime, economic stagnation, and decay in almost all sectors, including health and education, have intensified.
Water outages and electricity blackouts are common, sometimes lasting days and even weeks.
Infrastructure is collapsing, with roads, ports, and railways in poor condition.
The crises have made the ANC increasingly unpopular.
The party got 45.6 percent of the vote in local government elections in 2021, its lowest-ever tally and a far cry from the days when it regularly pulled 65 percent and more.
A survey in March by the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation had the ANC at only 39 percent.
Most analysts, however, expect the ANC to win between 45 and 48 percent on May 29.
That result would end the ANC’s reign of absolute power and erode the party’s ability to set policy but would see it partnering with a few smaller parties in a coalition government.
Independent political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki told The Epoch Times that South Africa is entering a “dangerous era” of coalition politics set to be characterized by “chaos.”
“The ANC has made it clear it’s not intending to change its ways,” he said.
“Ramaphosa’s repeated time and again that he’s sticking with the policy of Black Economic Empowerment that enriches him and his friends, that he’s sticking with the policy of this bloated, overpaid, mostly useless administrative class.
“He’s not changing the education system to produce the people with the technical ability of the South African population who could develop the country.
“He’s not going to end his government’s love affairs with China, Russia, and Iran that are making us enemies in powerful Western economies.
“He’s not going to privatize services, even though his government cannot effectively deliver them.”
That the ANC will likely remain in the Union Buildings after May 29, despite its many failures, has many South Africans “understandably frustrated, but it’s no mystery,” Prince Mashele of the Center for Politics and Research in Johannesburg said.
“The real tragedy here, and it will be proven again in this election, is that South Africa does not have an opposition with the credibility and the vision to motivate the masses to abandon the corrupt and incompetent ANC,” the analyst told The Epoch Times.
“The ANC has always done a very good last-minute job of convincing people, especially in the rural areas, that voting for the opposition means betraying the battle against apartheid and dancing on the graves of all the black people who died fighting the white supremacist machine.
“The ANC has done an excellent job of rewriting history to reflect that it, and it alone, achieved victory over apartheid, when of course the truth is very different.”
Wayne Sussman, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Africa Institute in Johannesburg, said he is convinced that the ANC is set to benefit from low voter turnout.
“There’s no doubt the ANC’s lost the love it once had in South Africa, but those that don’t love it anymore aren’t ready to marry someone else; they’re just going to stay away from the altar for now,” he told The Epoch Times.
“They’re not able to vote for opposition parties who are either ’too white‘ or ’too radical’ or ’too Christian' or too whatever.
“The ANC lost touch with the people long ago, but the only opposition parties with good policies and plans just don’t have the common touch needed to bring down the ANC at this stage.”
