South Africans are voting in local elections seen as a test for President Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress.
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SOUTH Africa’s trade union federation Cosatu called on all workers yesterday to turn out today to vote for the African National Congress in local government elections. South Africa’s next general elections are still three years away, and even though Zuma will be reaching the end of his constitutionally mandated two-term limit, the ANC is unlikely to lose control of the presidency.
SOUTH Africans voted on Wednesday in closely contested municipal elections that could deal a heavy blow to the ANC.
A portion of voters say they have turned on Zuma out of frustration, who among other things has been accused with about 800 counts of corruption – including the scandal surrounding the spending of public funds on lavish upgrades to his Nkandla family homestead.
Development in South Africa has been patchy since Mandela won the first multi-racial elections in 1994, with many black communities still struggling with poor housing, inadequate education and a lack of opportunities.
At least 26 percent of South Africans are without work.
“Unemployment is rife and I think voting will help change that”, said William Mahlangu, 58, a pensioner, at a polling station in Pretoria.
The other key outcome, it said, is that the ANC will “increasingly view the tainted President Zuma as an electoral liability and seek to replace him as national president before or at the 2017 ANC elective congress, where Zuma is due to stand down as ANC party president”. South Africa’s ruling party faces a robust challeng.
The biggest threat to the ANC comes from the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), a mainly white party, which a year ago named Mmusi Maimane, a black man, as its leader. The case went to the Constitutional Court, which said Zuma had violated the constitution and instructed the president to reimburse the state for $507,000, an amount that was determined by the national treasury.
“The ANC will win”, said Stonie Sizani, a 62 year old civil servant and lifetime ANC supporter in the region’s main city Port Elizabeth.
All parties have promised to improve social services if elected.
Many of these demonstrations have turned violent, and the South African Human Rights Commission has registered its concern about the increase in politically related killings ahead of the elections.
“For some time now, this election has looked and felt like a watershed moment which will be looked back on as the beginning of the end of the ANC”, Nicholas Spiro, a partner at London-based Lauressa Advisory Ltd., which advises asset managers, said by e-mail. “And if the answer is yes, then you must vote so that you can participate in moving the country forward”, he said.
“The DA has been gifted in a sense because you have an ANC that is imploding, but they will have to show that they can exploit it”, says Judith February, a governance expert.
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In the more immediate future, the more ground the DA is able to capture at the local elections, the more the markets will respond favourably, in our view.
