With elections drawing near, President Zuma has appeared at various rallies. But no party had a clear majority in any of the three centers, indicating that they will be run by coalitions after the election.
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Millions still feel a strong loyalty to the ANC, the party of anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela almost three years after his death.
The 104-year-old ruling party could lose control of Johannesburg, the commercial hub, the capital, Pretoria, and Port Elizabeth in Wednesday’s municipal election, surveys commissioned by broadcaster eNCA showed.
South Africans go to the polls on Wednesday 3rd August for local elections, said to be the most hotly and violently contested for over twenty years. The difference is that on that occasion the ANC was not losing power that it had systematically built.
The ANC’s main rival in the vote is the Democratic Alliance, which advocates overhauling labor laws to make it simpler to hire and fire workers and reducing red tape to make it easier to do business.
A record 63,654 candidates will compete for the support of a record 26.3 million registered voters in the elections. It elected Mmusi Maimane as its first black leader past year in an attempt to shed its image as a traditionally white party. Close to 20 dead candidates will appear on ballot papers because they were killed during the campaign and there wasn’t time to remove their names. If Zuma stays, a splintering of the ANC could occur. He thrives in the machinations of internal politics, maintaining his power by appointing his loyalists to key positions in the party ranks – even when he has been besieged by corruption allegations and other controversies.
Civil unrest is not new to South Africa; it was once synonymous with the struggle against Apartheid and has effectively become our primary strategy for voicing our discontent with a particular situation. Opposition parties tried to impeach him for violating the constitution, but the vote failed. That’s why you see President Zuma’s face on the campaign trail.
EFF Uthungulu regional secretary Nkululeko Ngubane, who is running the party’s campaign at Nkandla, says while some residents have received them “warmly”, there has been intimidation of residents associated with the EFF.
He made an example of the public broadcaster, SABC, as well as the well-known Gupta family’s “influence” in government. Some of Zuma’s decisions, including firing a respected finance minister, have caused bouts of volatility.
The unemployment rate stands at about 27 percent. Mr. Zuma’s economic mismanagement has pushed South Africa near to a “junk” rating from global credit agencies. And the country’s central bank is now forecasting zero growth this year.
“There is a Cape Town that caters for the needs of the rich and wealthy, which are prioritized, and another which leaves the poor unserviced and under-developed”, Zuma was quoted by News24Wire to say. Other opposition parties, especially the Democratic Alliance, have their sights set on victory in major metropolitan areas, which they hope could propel them forward when general elections are held in 2019. But, it also explains why Mmusi Maimane seeks to capture the symbolism and history of liberation in his own imagination; it reminds people of a promise not kept by the ANC, regardless of who leads the party.
Were that to happen, the DA would be right to describe the 2016 elections as the most important to the party itself.
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The results show that young South Africans consider protest action more effective than voting to get their issues addressed. The leadership of the ANC appears to have little appetite for reforms, which has created policy uncertainty … In the last election only about 36% of eligible South African voters could muster the political energy to do the same.
