South Africans elect their MPs on Wednesday, who will then choose the president. For the first time in three decades, Nelson Mandela’s party, the ANC, fears not obtaining an absolute majority in Parliament.
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South Africans are called to the polls to elect their deputies on Wednesday May 29 andhe African National Congress (ANC), which has dominated political life for 30 years might not get the majority. At the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC had a triumph, Nelson Mandela, the former prisoner of Robben Island, national hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner, became the country’s first black president.
In the years that followed, South Africa developed, it became a rich country, the richest even on the continent. But Nelson Mandela’s successors, all from the ANC, multiplied their errors; in particular they proved incapable of correcting the economic imbalances inherited from racial segregation.
According to the World Bank, the rainbow nation is today the most unequal in the world. The unemployment rate for the entire population is 32%, but in detail, it is 40% among blacks, only 7% among the white minority. In the agricultural sector, the reform has changed nothing, 60% of the land is still cultivated by whites.
Another example, the failure of what is called “Black Economic Empowerment”, a policy of positive discrimination. In the end, only members of the ANC became richer by accessing the capital of large companies and, from 2009, with the coming to power of Jacob Zuma, corruption became widespread at the highest level of the State. .
As a result of endemic corruption, the national electricity company Eskom is unable to provide continuous electricity: South Africans have had to get used to living with outages, up to 12 hours a day, until a few years ago. month. Water is not always available at the tap either.
All this has an impact on growth, which will still be less than 1% in 2024, according to forecasts. Enough to undermine the population’s confidence in the ANC, which has also failed to stem the rise in crime: 130 rapes and 80 murders per day, over the last three months of 2023.
Today, the party is committed to creating jobs and stimulating investment and to save the day, it is especially emphasizing all the social progress made in thirty years.
But the youngest, especially those who were “born free” after the Apartheid regime, who represent more than a third of the electorate and have only known its fiascos, have no illusions. They will not vote for ANC, considered incompetent and relegated to the party of the past.