(Bloomberg) — The 56,000-seat Moses Mabhida Stadium in the South African port city of Durban was packed for the unveiling of the election manifesto of the ruling African National Congress party.
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“We are supported by millions and millions of people,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told the cheering crowd in February, scoffing at the notion that his party was a spent political force after three decades in power. “The ANC remains the party of choice.”
In the following weeks, the arena built to host the 2010 football World Cup was packed again. But it was the ANC’s rivals, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters, who packed it.
As the country approaches its closest elections since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC faces competition like never before. A series of opinion polls show that the party risks losing its parliamentary majority and control of several provinces on Wednesday, in a reaction against the neglect of government services and rampant poverty, unemployment and crime.
The three provinces that are home to South Africa’s largest cities have different political dynamics and will be the main determinants of this week’s biggest winners and losers.
The eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, which includes Durban, is home to a fifth of registered voters and has a history of feverish politics. This month, 80 of the ruling party’s top leaders went door-to-door in the region’s municipalities to drum up support. They responded to a series of complaints about a lack of jobs and ineffective councillors.
“You shouldn’t find me sitting here in my house in the middle of the day during working hours, but I am because I don’t have a job,” Thuli Khawula, 39, told ANC president Gwede Mantashe, who visited her home. in Sitholinhlanhla, about 170 kilometers (106 miles) north of Durban. “These are some of the things that make me doubt whether or not I should continue to vote for the ANC.”
The ANC wrested control of KwaZulu-Natal from the Inkatha Freedom Party, or IFP, in 2004 and won 54% of the vote in 2019, but lost several recent municipal by-elections to its resurgent rival.
Meanwhile, a new party led by former president Jacob Zuma has also been attracting crowds. The charismatic 82-year-old led South Africa for almost nine scandal-plagued years before being ousted in 2018 and breaking with the ANC in December. He was born in KwaZulu-Natal and remains popular among his Zulu-speaking peers.
A poll released this month by MarkData and commissioned by broadcaster eNCA showed that Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party, or MKP, received 46.4% support in the province, the IFP 14.5% and the ANC just 11.1%. A number of other surveys also show that the ANC is losing ground, although some analysts have questioned its methodology.
The ANC and IFP fought an undeclared civil war in KwaZulu-Natal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was fueled by the apartheid government and claimed thousands of lives before a truce was agreed.
Since then, there have been dozens of political assassinations in the province, amid bitter rivalry over government jobs and contracts. It was the epicenter of deadly riots that broke out in July 2021 after Zuma was arrested for refusing to testify before a corruption inquiry.
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Gauteng, the smallest but most populous of the nine provinces, is also critical to the ANC’s fortunes. Although the party has governed the central region since 1994, it obtained just over half of the votes in 2019 and the MarkData poll shows that this number fell to 41% this year.
Home to 24% of the electorate, Gauteng includes Johannesburg, the largest city, Pretoria, the capital, and Ekurhuleni, a major industrial center. All three are governed by unstable coalitions that have struggled to provide basic services.
The ruling party has done everything it can over the past few months to try to rebuild support in the region, implementing plans to create 500,000 temporary jobs and carrying out repairs on hundreds of faulty transformers to reduce electricity cuts. During the campaign, those responsible distributed free party t-shirts, blankets and even flu medicine.
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Lerato Makau, 73, who lives in the small town of Refilwe, northeast of Pretoria, reflects the views of many older black voters – who, despite the ANC’s shortcomings, cannot imagine voting for anyone else.
“This is Nelson Mandela’s party,” she said. “We were arrested by this party when it was fighting with us to free us from the oppression we faced from the White government. Things won’t be perfect all the time, but I’m alive, I’m healthy, I’m provided for – that’s because of the ANC.”
The main opposition, the Democratic Alliance, or DA, poses the biggest challenge to the ANC in Gauteng. However, the EFF’s calls to nationalize the banks and mines and place all land in state trust endeared it to a growing number of black township residents, whose standard of living has improved little since the end of apartheid.
ActionSA, which is led by former Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba and which won 16% of the city’s vote in the 2021 municipal elections, is also expected to have a strong presence in Gauteng, most likely at the expense of the Attorney General’s Office. The MKP is expected to take some votes away from the ANC and EFF.
Politics in the Western Cape, which includes the tourist hub of Cape Town, differs markedly from the rest of the country. It is the only province where the ANC does not hold an absolute majority, with the DA in power since 2009.
AD’s dominance is being eroded by smaller rivals, including the Patriotic Alliance. The party was founded by Gayton McKenzie, a reformed criminal turned businessman, in 2013 and has made inroads into mixed-race and rural areas. Then there is Freedom Front Plus, which has increased its support among the Afrikaner community.
The DA also risks losing the support of the Muslim community, which represents 5.2% of the Western Cape population, due to its refusal to take a strong stance against Israel during its war in Gaza, as the ANC did.
Residents of gang-infested areas around Cape Town say they want the province’s next administration to prioritize combating rampant crime.
“Our life is miserable, it’s terrifying,” said Nomawethu Bongo, 71, an ANC supporter who lives in the working-class suburb of Philippi. Gangs “are not afraid of any law enforcement. They run things here,” she said.
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–With assistance from Paul Richardson, Leonardo Nicoletti, Michael Ovaska, Amanda Cox and Dean Halford.
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