Mandela’s party stumbles as election approaches in South Africa

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JOHANNESBURG — One party has had a stranglehold on power for three decades, but this year’s contest, on May 29, brings new questions for South Africans.

The African National Congress (ANC), which Nelson Mandela led to victory at the post-apartheid nation’s first democratic vote in 1994, is polling below 50% and has intraparty divisions in Africa’s largest economy and fourth most populous country.

The result will likely have reverberations far beyond the region. The U.S. has cultivated South Africa as an economic and strategic partner, but Pretoria and the capitals of other nations in the BRICS bloc — Brazil, Russia, India and China — have been vocal in recent years challenging the U.S. and what they say is an international order set by the West that holds down those who try to contest Washington’s global dominance.

Also straining U.S.-South African relations is Pretoria’s lead role in pressing a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice over its campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the government’s refusal to break ties with Russia or condemn Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Past reports of the ANC’s demise have proved exaggerated, but President Cyril Ramaphosa, a former business executive and union leader who took the helm in 2018, heads a ruling party that limps into the final weeks of the campaign split by factions, some ethnic but mostly political.

Former President Jacob Zuma, 82, whose tenure was cut short in 2018 over allegations of corruption, has formed his own party, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), named for the ANC’s military wing that fought White rule. In those days, Mr. Zuma, exiled in nearby Zambia, was head of intelligence for the original MK, which had close ties to the Soviet Union.

The ANC’s former youth leader, Julius Malema, now 43, is also trying to dislodge his former party with his leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). His platform calls for nationalizing banks, mines and farmland without compensation.

Another former ANC president, Thabo Mbeki, who took over from Mandela as head of state in 1999, has been brought out of retirement to challenge Mr. Zuma over the multiple charges of financial abuse he faces in the courts. Mr. Ramaphosa surely would have voiced these accusations had it not emerged in 2022 that $580,000 in U.S. currency was stashed in a sofa at Mr. Ramaphosa’s farm 100 miles north of the capital.

The ANC used its numbers in Parliament to block discussion on the issue and defeated a motion for their leader’s impeachment. Still, “sofagate” has given Mr. Zuma the perfect retort should Mr. Ramaphosa try to portray him as a crook. Both deny any wrongdoing during their time in office.

Bumpy ride

The South African Constitution allows a president to serve just two five-year terms. On May 29, voters will elect a new lower house of the National Assembly. Depending on the share of votes each party gains, members of the upper house will be nominated. On the same day, voters will choose a provincial legislature in each of the nine provinces.

Since the end of apartheid, the ANC has held a majority in both houses of the Assembly and has never needed a coalition partner to form a government.

Mr. Mbeki’s second stint was cut short in 2008. The ANC removed him from office at the instigation of Mr. Zuma, who then suffered the same fate at the hands of Mr. Ramaphosa.

The ANC reached its zenith in 2004 under Mr. Mbeki, when it took almost 70% of the 400 seats in the national Parliament, more than the two-thirds required to change the constitution. Support has been steadily eroding since, with rising unemployment, seemingly endless corruption scandals and a string of troubles at state-owned entities.

In 2020, the once-profitable South African Airways went into liquidation. During the Zuma presidency, the state airline — which in its heyday flew the world’s longest nonstop route between Johannesburg and Washington Dulles International Airport — ran up losses of more than a half-billion dollars.

Until recently, power cuts have been a daily problem. Eskom, a state monopoly that provides most of the country’s electricity, has struggled to meet demand. In campaign mode, Mr. Ramaphosa cited repairs and other reforms that abruptly ended two years of disruptive and debilitating power outages and announced in February that “the worst is behind us.”

The authorities insist it was not an election stunt, but a cynical public has responded by joking that May 30, the day after the election, will be “South Africa’s D-Day.” The D stands for darkness as the lights go out after the election is safely over.

Perilous polls

Opinion polls are costly and challenging in a country with 11 official languages and rural voters across almost 500,000 square miles. No survey this year has put the ANC above 45%, and some peg it below 40%. It is the first time the party has had less than half the electorate in its camp.

Five years ago, Mr. Ramaphosa took office with 57.5% of the national vote. Now, Mr. Zuma’s MK party is polling up to 13%, which analysts agree has come mostly from the ANC’s political base.

Mr. Ramaphosa has an easy manner and, more than any of his predecessors, has made himself accessible to voters at meetings across the country. He is close to his party’s political center but has not been able to reverse the fall in support.

The ANC received more bad news as the campaign entered the home stretch. Statistics South Africa reported Tuesday that the national jobless rate in the first quarter of 2024 rose nearly 1 percentage point to 32.9%. Meanwhile, the national youth unemployment rate is 45.5%.

It did not take long for the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s main opposition party, to highlight the weak employment numbers and the political problem they pose for Mr. Ramaphosa’s government. DA Shadow Labor Minister Michael Bagraim told reporters that “the jobs bloodbath” is “a more compelling reason to vote the ANC out in two weeks’ time.”

The Zulu vote

South Africa, with a population of 62 million, has no ethnic majority, but speakers of the Zulu language make up a quarter of the population. Mr. Zuma is now by far the most senior figure among the Zulu.

He portrays the government as heavy with lawyers and economists, an elite out of touch with the masses. This message resonates way beyond ethnicity with the legions of youths who live four or five in a shack and struggle to make a living. On Saturday, they will be at Johannesburg’s Orlando Sports Stadium as Mr. Zuma rallies his MK party.

The Democratic Alliance, led by John Steenhuisen, 48, has attracted about a quarter of the support in recent polls. His appeal extends across racial boundaries in a country with a White population of just 8%. The DA is leading in Pretoria and the industrial hub of Johannesburg and has long-held power in Cape Town.

It is a 34-year-old openly gay White man from the DA, Chris Pappas, who looks set to become provincial premier in KwaZulu-Natal. He stands out as the greatest challenge to the ANC and MK because, unlike most other White South Africans, Mr. Pappas speaks flawless Zulu and has drawn massive crowds to his rallies.

An opposition agenda

Mr. Steenhuisen has warned that the ANC will likely form a “doomsday coalition” with Mr. Malema’s EFF if it loses its majority. EFF appears set to win 12% of the vote. The price, he says, would be the EFF’s demand for wholesale nationalization of the economy and a further drift away from the U.S. and the rest of the West.

Mr. Steenhuisen told The Washington Times that if his party wins enough votes to lead a rival coalition into office, he would adopt a much different approach to world affairs.

“South Africa has never been a client state to any of the great powers, though we served with the Allies in both World Wars and in Korea,” he said. “But there is almost a knee-jerk reaction in the current government against anything proposed or supported by the United States, even though it is one of our biggest partners in trade.”

He said conflicts in central Africa and instability in Somalia and the Sahel region “have led to vast numbers of refugees coming south and — while it is important that we help these people — what we really need is to find solutions that bring peace to their home countries.”

The DA’s shadow foreign minister, Emma Powell, said that instead of debating wars in Ukraine and Gaza, South Africa should “focus on the bloodbath unfolding on the African continent.” She said wars in Congo and the fight against extremist groups in West Africa had been ignored.

“If the ANC was genuinely interested in peace, human rights or the rule of law, they would have spoken out against the tragedy unfolding in Sudan, where more than 10,000 civilians have been killed in some of the most brutal ethnic cleansing the world has witnessed in a generation.”

In October, South Africa abstained from a resolution at the United Nations Human Rights Council calling for a cease-fire in Sudan.

On talk radio and in the press, South Africans voice the same concerns as voters in other democracies. Mr. Steenhuisen’s campaign has focused on this.

“People want a safe place to call home, a job that has meaning, education that provides our children with opportunity, and the freedom to say what we think. And be it in Cape Town or Kansas, these are the basic rights every government has to deliver. And my party intends to do exactly that.”