South Africa’s 2024 election: polling stations open in what could be the most hotly contested election since the end of apartheid

Johannesburg, South Africa
CNN
—

Millions of South Africans are voting in what is expected to be the most crucial general election since the end of apartheid.

For months, polls have shown that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party could lose its majority for the first time since Nelson Mandela brought it to power in 1994.

Although elections may prove difficult in South Africa, most analysts say the ANC faces its toughest challenge yet, facing a population deeply frustrated with the direction the country is taking. If support for the ANC falls below 50% for the first time, the party will be forced to form a coalition government.

ANC leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called Wednesday’s vote “one of the most important elections in our country’s history” while addressing a crowd of thousands has Saturday at the FNB Football Stadium in Soweto.

“Our people will decide whether our country continues to move forward with the ANC towards a better and brighter future or goes backwards to a terrible past,” Ramaphosa said.

South Africa is the most unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank. Citizens also face the world’s highest sustained unemployment rate, endemic corruption, weak economic growth, crippling power outages and increased violent crime.

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.

There are 52 parties on the national ballot this election, including new parties formed by former ANC members such as former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.

Zuma was forced to resign as president in 2018 and served a brief prison sentence in 2021 for contempt of court. The 82-year-old was barred from running in parliamentary elections last week after the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that five years must have passed since his sentence was served. However, his party will still run for office and his face will remain on the ballot.

Capping a heated few months of election campaigning, many of the biggest parties held their final rallies this weekend, including the Democratic Alliance (DA)., the official opposition party.

“On Wednesday the ANC will lose the absolute majority it has abused for decades to subject the people of this country to unemployment, corruption and mismanagement…we close the ANC chapter of our history” , DA leader John Steenhuisen told supporters in the town of Benoni, east of Johannesburg. The DA formed a coalition bloc with smaller opposition parties, called the Multi-Party Charter.

This is the seventh general election held in South Africa since the end of white minority rule 30 years ago. A record 27.79 million people are registered to vote – the highest number to date, according to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).