In power since the end of the apartheid Twenty-seven years ago, the historical Party of Nelson Mandela is in loss of speed, undermined by corruption.
Le Monde
More than 26 million South Africans started Monday morning 1 November, the dropper, to go to the polls for municipal elections at high risks for the ruling party since the End of apartheid, the ANC (National African Congress), which could for the first time pass below 50% of the votes.
Polling stations opened at 5 hours GMT. Only 26.2 million South Africans are registered on the electoral lists to choose their representatives in some 250 municipalities, about a population of about 40 million to vote.
For years, the ANC, Nelson Mandela’s historic party who has been running South Africa since the end of the apartheid twenty-seven years ago, is losing speed.
Several leaders, and in the first place former President Jacob Zuma, are accused of looting the crates of the country and have serious unravels with justice, while unemployment reaches records at more than 30%, in An economy already in recession before the CVIV-19 crisis.
Vote for change
“The leaders of the ANC have not kept their commitments, they make too many empty promises,” plague Samuel Mahlale, 55, in a tail of barely twenty people in front of a polling station in Soweto. This uber driver, father of four children, says vote since the first democratic elections in 1994, but now asks “change”.
Same desire for something else in Danville, suburbs of the capital Pretoria dominated by a white middle class. “I vote that there is change in the country, a better life for all,” says Charmaine Barnard, 57 years old.
In July, the country had a wave of riots and looting that have made more than 350 deaths, initially triggered by the incarceration of Mr. Zuma, but also the sign of a social and economic climate. .
The army has been deployed in urban centers for elections: some 10,000 soldiers have been called police reinforcement in the provinces of Gauteng, where Johannesburg and Pretoria, and KwaZulu-Natal (is ), where the July riots had started and were the most virulent.
“Clean the party”
years of widespread management and corruption have left the abandonment of many public services in South Africa, where the power off or water supply is multiplied, to the point of even affecting the campaign election.
The polls suggest that a majority of voters could for the first time turn away from the ANC. “One is perhaps at a turning point for the ANC and a turning point for South Africa,” says the Chairman of the Democracy Works think tank, William Guimede.
Throughout the campaign, President Cyril Ramaphosa, also boss of the ANC, repeated to voters “Clean the party”. He made the fight against corruption a battlehorse. At the 2016 municipal, the ANC had recorded its worst score (54%) and lost key towns including Pretoria and Johannesburg.
In front, however, the opposition remains divided. The Democratic Alliance (DA), always perceived as a white party, and the radical left of the combatants for economic freedom (Economic Freedom Fighters, eff) who had succeeded in composing improbable coalitions in some municipalities five years ago , this time comes in dispersed order.
Voters will also have the choice of a unique number of independent candidates – 1,700 out of 60,000 – which could come blur the cards of a ballot where the ANC plays big before the general elections of 2024.