Polls closed in South Africa on Wednesday after nationwide elections almost certain to keep the ruling ANC in power despite anger over corruption scandals, sluggish growth, and record unemployment.
The election is the first measure of whether President Cyril Ramaphosa can reinvigorate support for a party whose backing flows largely from its liberation credentials, but now faces the prospect of a reduced majority.
Polls opened at 7am with about 26.8 million voters registered to cast their ballots at 22,925 polling stations countrywide and voting passed off largely without incident, officials said.
Preliminary results will emerge on Thursday, with an official winner declared on Saturday.
Unemployment and corruption allegations
Anger over corruption, the economy and land reform are key issues as South Africans vote in the sixth democratic election since Apartheid ended 25-years-ago.
The African National Congress, or ANC, that led the fight against Apartheid, governed the country since 1994 - but it’s become increasingly unpopular after a long list of ANC officials were accused of corruption and mismanagement amid economic woes.
In South Africa, the economy is stagnating, the national debt is worrying, unemployment is officially at 27 per cent and more than one in two young people are without jobs.
n South Africa Elections, ANC Can’t Count on Black Middle-Class Voters. Source: The New York Times
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over from scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma as ANC leader in December 2017, is trying to restore faith in the governing party.
The ANC has won every parliamentary election since 1994 but saw its share of the vote fall from a high of more than 69 per cent in 2004 to 62 per cent in 2014.
ANC's Cyril Ramaphosa (R) seen here earlier with Jacob Zuma (L) Source: AAP
Professor Kwandiwe Kondlo from the politics department at the University of Johannesburg told SBS News the ANC is expected to secure another parliamentary majority this week, but he predicted that the size of the majority could fall.
"What's been going wrong over the years, it starts first with the party, the ANC, the lack of coherence within the party itself. where you find that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing," he said.
"Because the centre doesn't hold, this affects government.
"There have been serious concerns about corruption, the delivery of basic services to ordinary citizens, and how ANC radical slogans affected investor confidence."
Years of corruption scandals have sullied the ANC’s reputation and could prove costly this election as opposition parties target it.
A state corruption inquiry has heard evidence that associates of former President Zuma syphoned off huge sums from state tenders. Mr Zuma has consistently denied wrongdoing.
Economy and Unemployment
South Africa’s economic growth has slowed sharply in recent years, stretching public finances and sparking fierce disagreements over the direction of economic policy.
It also has some of the worst unemployment levels among major emerging market economies, trapping millions of people in poverty and spurring violent protests.
Around 27 per cent of South Africans were unemployed in the fourth quarter last year, and among young black South Africans, the jobless rate is one in two.
Waiting for work has become worse in South Africa. Source: SBS
The three main political parties have all put job creation at the heart of their campaigns.
Professor Kondlo said the "size of the cake [of the economy] has not been growing, but the population is growing".
He said the other problem is the stagnant size of the private sector.
"The other issue that's related to high unemployment is failing small and medium-sized businesses, they are not thriving," he said.
A number of companies in the mining sector alone, which is one of the biggest employers in the economy, have announced thousands of job cuts in the past year.
South Africa's economic outlook is foggy, if not grim. Source: SBS
Land
The land is an important issue in South Africa, where the bulk of productive agricultural land has remained in white hands since the end of Apartheid in 1994.
The ANC government failed to meet its target of transferring 30 per cent of commercial farmland to black hands by 2014.
In South Africa’s Fabled Wine Country, White and Black Battle over land. Source: The New York Times
This fueled unrest by communities living in squalid shanty towns demanding better housing and services.
Professor Kondlo said the land issue is usually raised as part of a political game.
"We've not really seen a clear, detailed policy that talks about how land reform is going to happen."
Under pressure from the far-left and more radical elements in the ANC, Mr Ramaphosa last year launched a process to change the constitution to make explicit provision for land expropriation without compensation.
But Mr Ramphosa, if he is returned to power, would need to strike a balance between policies that help quell simmering discontent among the black majority without derailing a struggling economy.
The country also has issues with its power supply with frequent outages affecting households, businesses, schools and hospitals.
No Alternative?
Professor Kondo said there's no real political alternative for voters.
"Our opposition parties in South Africa, what makes them fail to constitute a viable alternative is the ideological gap and the differences you see, he said.
"We have the ANC, which is the majority party, a centre-right party, and the Economic Freedom Fighters party, which is a left-wing political party.
Put together, the professor said, they could pose a challenge to the ANC majority, but "to see them together, given the ideological divide, is something difficult to even imagine".
