Nelson Mandela’s party suffered a seismic blow in the elections. Where will he leave South Africa?

Johannesburg, South Africa
CNN
—

South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, is expected to lose its majority for the first time in 30 years after this week’s national elections, marking the biggest political change in the country since the end of apartheid.

With results in 90% of voting precincts as of 5:10 p.m. ET, support for the ANC was at 41.04%. The official opposition party, the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), received 21.72% of the vote.

Behind them were two breakaway parties from the ANC: the new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, led by Zuma, received 13.69% of the vote, and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) received 13.69% of the vote. 9.46%, according to data from the country’s electoral commission. watch.

Exasperated voters dealt a seismic blow to Nelson Mandela’s party after years of corruption scandals and economic mismanagement. As a result, the ANC will be forced to form a coalition to govern the most unequal country in the world.

Cyril Ramaphosa, president of South Africa and the ANC – and once Mandela’s favorite to succeed him as leader – promised a “new dawn” when he took over in 2018 from disgraced former president Jacob Zuma.

But many say those promises never came to fruition and that the election results reflect a population deeply frustrated with the direction the country is taking. South Africans could now face weeks of political uncertainty, as the ANC seeks to strike a coalition deal with its former rivals.

The rebuke to the ANC was hardly unexpected, reflecting widespread discontent with the ruling party. But the scale of the losses surprised some.

“What we have seen is that voters are unhappy with the recent history of the ANC. Particularly what happened in the Zuma years and what followed,” analyst and former ANC MP Melanie Verwoerd told CNN.

There has been “a general arrogance and loss of connection with the general voter on the ANC side”, Verwoerd said, adding that parties like MK and the EFF have capitalized on this discontent.

Zuma – a fierce critic of Ramaphosa – was forced to resign as leader in 2018 and served a brief stint in prison in 2021 for contempt of court. The Constitutional Court banned the 82-year-old from running in parliamentary elections in May, but his face remained on the MK party ballot.

Substantial negotiations will likely begin once the final results are announced. Political parties will have two weeks to form a coalition government before a new parliament meets to elect the country’s president. If they fail, new elections will have to be held.

“I have no sympathy for Mr Ramaphosa and his party,” DA leader John Steenhuisen told CNN in an interview at the National Election Results Centre.

“It was their lack of courage in the face of Mr Zuma’s prospect and his sins of omission and commission that led him to become a political force that came to destroy them in places like KwaZulu-Natal and other regions of the country. .”

The populous coastal province of KwaZulu-Natal, where the main city of Durban is located, is traditionally a stronghold of the conservative Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).

Zuma has faced hundreds of charges of corruption, fraud and racketeering over the years. He always denied them and became known as the “Teflon President” because few politicians could have survived the scandals he faced and overcame.

Analysts CNN spoke to, including Verwoerd, believe the most likely coalition would be between the ANC and the DA. But others are more skeptical of this result. They all agree that the country is in uncharted territory.

Steenhuisen told CNN he wanted to be part of a governing coalition and believed a coalition “could work.” Before the elections, the DA had already formed a bloc with smaller opposition parties, called the Multi-Party Charter.

What he calls a “doomsday coalition” is one of the other options on the table: a deal between the ANC-EFF or even MK.

But with such disdain within these separatist parties for Ramaphosa, it would take a lot of negotiation.

The EFF is led by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema. He advocates expropriation of land without compensation and radical state nationalism. The MK party manifesto contains broadly similar ideas and demands an overhaul of the country’s constitution to return more powers to traditional rulers.

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, the South African political landscape has never been so vague.

But some analysts believe – despite the uncertainty – that the results of these elections could constitute a victory for democracy.

“This is probably a coming of age in democracy, we needed change and it is never good to have such single-party domination in a country,” Verwoerd said.

“It might be a little more unstable as we move into the future. But for the sake of democracy, it’s probably a good thing.”

She said the ANC’s prospects had fallen dramatically under the previous president.

“Once the Jacob Zuma years passed, it became almost inevitable that there would be a slide,” she added.

The ANC came to power in 1994 through a commitment to “build a better life for all”, winning nearly 63% of the votes in the country’s first democratic election.

Three decades later, widespread corruption, rising unemployment, crippling power cuts and low economic growth are taking a serious toll on South Africans.

The economy has declined over the past decade, as evidenced by a sharp decline in living standards. According to the World Bank, gross domestic product per capita has fallen after peaking in 2011, leaving the average South African 23% poorer.

South Africa has the highest unemployment rate in the world, according to the World Bank. Inequality is also the worst in the world.

Black South Africans, who represent 81% of the population, are the first victims of this disastrous situation. Unemployment and poverty remain concentrated in the black majority, largely due to the failure of public schooling, while most white South Africans are employed and earn considerably higher wages.

Any coalition government will be a bitter pill to swallow for the ANC and Ramaphosa, who may soon be fighting for his political life.

Prominent analysts say the ANC was too reliant on its legacy.

“The ANC was campaigning over three decades of its existence. But no one was looking at the current president,” said TK Pooe, a senior lecturer at the Wits School of Governance in Johannesburg. He believes Ramaphosa is “under pressure”.

“Historically, it’s an embarrassment for him. He always presents himself as the next Nelson Mandela,” Pooe told CNN. But “to the last memory, Nelson Mandela never lost an election”.

Pooe said that with this election, voters said three things to the ANC: “jobs, jobs, jobs”.

It is very uncertain whether a coalition government can meet the expectations of the people, but one thing is certain: South Africa and the ANC – Mandela’s former liberation movement which triumphed over apartheid – will not will never be the same again.