Cyril Ramaphosa vies for re-election South Africa voters go to polls

JOHANNESBURG | South Africans went to the polls Wednesday for a vote that will decide whether the ruling African National Congress party will remain in power despite corruption scandals and soaring unemployment.

With preliminary results still pending Wednesday night and official vote counts not expected before week’s end, election day passed in relative peace compared with past contests rocked by violence within the ANC party, who’s front-runner candidate Cyril Ramaphosa hopes to secure victory.

Mr. Ramaphosa took over the party 15 months ago from Jacob Zuma — the disgraced former president facing multiple charges of corruption — and now seeks to win at least 60 percent of the national vote for an electoral mandate to shift the ANC to the right, attract investment for South Africa and embark on an ambitious scheme to create jobs.

Cheering crowds greeted Mr. Ramaphosa when he and his wife voted Wednesday morning. Addressing supporters, the candidate spoke of “renewal” and “a new beginning,” a theme that’s dominated his campaign as he tries to revive a party damaged by infighting and allegations of billions in racketeering and embezzlement.

Mr. Ramaphosa’s main rival is Mmusi Maimane of the Democratic Alliance or DA. Not yet 40-years-old, Mr. Maimane is married to a white South African and opposed to a controversial ANC plan that would give the government powers to confiscate land without compensating owners.

Mr. Maimane has argued similar programs in neighboring Zimbabwe, where mostly white farm owners were evicted 20 years ago, were a failure that reducing that country from a food exporter one of the world’s poorest nations.

A majority of commercial farms in South Africa are owned by the white minority, who make up around 10 percent of a population of roughly 55 million people.

Mr. Maimane told The Washington Times that “violence and revolution will consume South Africa” if the issue of black, youth unemployment is not solved. “We can talk about land and we can get emotional on issues of race, but when you get out and speak to black people here, especially the young, the pain is all about having an education and no being able to find a job,” he said.

Frustration among the nation’s youth is evident on talk radio and in community beer halls in high-density suburbs of Johannesburg, where it’s not uncommon for as many as eight or 10 black men to share a single room, as well as a single kitchen and shower with neighboring shacks.

In the economically depressed suburb of Alexandria — near the commercial district of Sandton, an area dubbed “the richest square mile in Africa” — there have been protests nearly every week since March, with residents complaining about broken roads, vast piles of garbage, poor housing and one of South Africa’s highest crime rates.

“You have to live here to understand,” said Moses Gumede, 23, who has lived in Alexandria since 2014. “At school, I was top of class in my final year for mathematics, science, economics and English, but the only work I can get is loading bricks at a building site. And that’s one or two days a week,” Mr. Gumede said.

When asked which party he was supporting on Wednesday, Mr. Gumede said he hadn’t registered to vote. “Even our councillors and representatives who are supposed to run Alexandria don’t live here. They have mansions in the suburbs and their kids go to private schools. How can I vote for people like that?”

Registration among black people under the age of 30 is at its lowest level since the end of white-minority rule in 1994 when former president Nelson Mandela led the ANC to victory in the nation’s first democratic elections.

Firebrand youth leader Julius Malema, 38, who left the ANC to form his Economic Freedom Fighters or EFF had been banking on the young to lift his numbers at the polls Wednesday. He cast his own vote near his home area 180 miles north of Johannesburg, and while polling showed he could win between eight and 12 per cent nationally, his socialist-leaning policies may worry outside investors.

For Mr. Ramaphosa, meanwhile, an election win is not seen to be in doubt.

In raw numbers, no party appears close to the ANC. But a substantial mandate would help him push out elements of the party still linked to Jacob Zuma, the man he ousted in a party coup.