S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings both have South Africa’s foreign debt rating at one notch above “junk” status, citing concerns about economic growth, reliable energy, labor reform and mining legislation.
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South Africans between ages 15 and 34 account for around 19.7 million (55 percent) of South Africa’s working-age population.
Losses would be concerning for the ANC, but they would not necessarily create a crisis in the party. Today, this power base enables the Democratic Alliance to challenge the ANC from the political center.
Investors will probably welcome any slippage in the ANC’s dominance in Wednesday’s municipal elections because it could push the party to do more to attract investment and stoke an economy growing at the slowest rate since a 2009 recession, said Greg Katzenellenbogen, a director at Sanlam Private Investments. More recently, Mmusi Maimane has surged to the fore of public attention as leader of the DA and its first black leader, having replaced Helen Zille in May 2015.
President Jacob Zuma has told ANC supporters at a rally in Johannesburg that his party will root out all forms of corruption at the wards it wins in the August 3 elections.
A more radical opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, advocates the nationalization of industry and other measures that it says would help the poor. The party appeals to South Africa’s white and liberal constituents as well as members of the black middle class, who desire a quality of life unattached to government welfare.
According to Business Day, the after-effects of this election will be a clamber to form governments through coalitions in a few of the municipalities, but that at this point the political significance of these elections can not yet be understood.
“There is, however, a lot more up for grabs”, he says, referring to a number of municipalities in the Northern Cape and Western Cape where the margin between governing party and opposition is one, or two percent.
However, over the past week the ANC has staged something of a comeback in the cities of Pretoria and Johannesburg, pulling slightly ahead of the DA in the latest polls for these cities.
The ANC has also been dogged by Mr. Zuma’s frequent brushes with scandal.
“I am confident that we are going to do very well”, the president said at the end of a bitter and racial-tinged campaign in which he accused DA supporters of believing that black people could not lead the country.
“In every election our people disprove the myth that the ANC has not delivered”, Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, said in a statement on Monday. ANC loyalists said they remained confident.
Nelson Mandela Bay: ANC 45%; DA 40%. Positively, there are still hopes that Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa (with market-friendly credentials) will be elected, although Zuma’s ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is still a strong contender in the race for succession.
Were that to happen, the DA would be right to describe the 2016 elections as the most important to the party itself. Many are concerned about the lack of jobs, with a quarter of South Africans being unemployed.
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This article is a summary from a recent Societe Generale report.
