Cape Town, South Africa — South African opposition parties made a final appeal to voters on Tuesday as the country faces the possibility of historic change in its young democracy.
At the center of Wednesday’s national election is the question of whether South Africans will express their strongest rejection yet of the ruling African National Congress party, which has ruled since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.
The ANC has won a majority in every national election in the past 30 years, but several polls put its support less than 50% ahead, raising the prospect of a major shift in Africa’s most advanced economy. Final election results are expected on Sunday.
As the ANC’s appeal as a liberator fades among younger voters who do not remember apartheid, opposition parties are reaching out and promising to deliver on promises that many feel have not been kept.
Main opposition leader John Steenhuisen of the Democratic Alliance party called it “South Africa’s most important election in post-democratic history.” He urged people to vote against the ANC to “rescue” the country.
“There is so much at stake in this election that people cannot stay home,” Steenhuisen said while campaigning in Cape Town, the party’s stronghold.
The Economic Freedom Fighters, the third-largest party in Parliament, said they were calling on their supporters to “flood the polling stations to express our opinion tomorrow.”
The ANC claimed that it was “the only authentic political party with the capacity and experience to govern.”
South Africa’s opposition parties have highlighted widespread poverty, high unemployment and the failure of basic government services in many communities as reasons for moving away from the ANC after three decades.
But there probably won’t be a new ruling party in its place.
The ANC is still expected to win the most seats in Parliament. But without an outright majority he may need to rely on a coalition to govern and re-elect President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final five-year term. That had never happened before in South Africa. It is not yet clear who in the opposition the ANC might turn to.
The ANC insists it is focused on retaining its majority.
Voting began on Monday and Tuesday with South Africans who were given special permission, such as senior citizens, members of the armed forces and critical workers, casting their early votes. According to the independent electoral commission, just over 600,000 people were registered to vote early.
The vast majority of the nearly 28 million registered voters in the country of 62 million people are expected to go to the polls in South Africa’s nine provinces on Wednesday, which is a national holiday.
According to the electoral commission, more than 50 parties are registered to participate in the national elections, the largest number to date. Many of the parties are new. Independent candidates are also permitted to apply for the first time.
This has given rise to a fragmented opposition that also includes former South African president Jacob Zuma’s new MK Party.
Shamiso Tebogo Bopape, a 21-year-old student at the University of Johannesburg, said there was no clear opposition party that she and other young people could choose from.
“We don’t know who to trust,” he said. “The smaller parties haven’t been put in these richer positions or bigger positions. We haven’t given them enough power to see what they would do.” in that position, so we can’t necessarily say that we trust them.”
The electoral commission has said the special vote generally began without problems. South Africa has held largely peaceful and credible elections since the violent build-up to the crucial 1994 vote that overthrew apartheid.
The commission said it faced a battle against electoral misinformation. In the latest example, he said South Africans would be allowed to vote even if they had manicures or false nails, debunking claims that they would not. Such nails would not affect how officials apply an indelible ink mark to the base of the left thumb to indicate that someone has voted, the commission said.
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Risemberg reported from Johannesburg.
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