President of the ruling African National Congress and South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa speaks to the media after casting his vote in Soweto on May 29, in Johannesburg.Chris McGrath/Getty Images
After a day of unexpectedly long queues and heavy voter turnout in many regions, South African officials are counting millions of ballots in an election that could determine the fate of President Cyril Ramaphosa and his long-ruling African National Congress.
For the first time in its 30 years in power, the ANC is projected to fall below 50 per cent of the vote, according to most opinion polls. If the polls for Wednesday’s election are correct, the ANC will have to negotiate with opposition parties to find coalition partners to continue governing.
Some polls suggest the ANC’s support could fall below 45 per cent, a humiliating outcome that would probably force Mr. Ramaphosa to resign within months to make room for a new party leader and president, analysts say.
In the most competitive election race since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ballots on Wednesday featured a record 70 political parties, including 31 newly registered parties, along with 11 independent candidates. Its unpredictable outcome has also sparked a surge of voter interest, seemingly reversing the long-standing decline in turnout, if the early indications were accurate.
For decades, voter turnout has been gradually eroding in South African elections as voters grow weary of the ANC’s frequent corruption scandals and governance failures, including the country’s soaring unemployment rate and frequent electricity cuts. Rather than switching to relatively unpopular opposition parties, many eligible voters simply stayed home, refusing to cast ballots as alienation and apathy grew.
On Wednesday, however, there were signs South Africa’s voter turnout was higher than the 66-per-cent turnout in the last election in 2019, according to Sy Mamabola, chief executive officer of the country’s independent electoral commission.
Mr. Mamabola cited a “late surge” in voting during the afternoon. “The Commission is pleased with the high turnout at many voting stations across the country,” he said in an early-evening briefing, about three hours before the stations closed.
It is still unclear whether the official turnout on Wednesday will top the mark from the last election, since many voters have been deterred by organizational glitches at the voting stations, including the frequent failure of electronic scanners that were intended to read the identity cards of voters. The long queues of voters sometimes reflected those organizational problems.
Early voting results are expected on Thursday morning, although the official results will take several days to announce.
The ANC has been on a steady slide in every election since 2004, when it peaked with almost 70 per cent of the vote. By the 2019 election, it had fallen to 57 per cent. It dropped below the 50-per-cent mark in the 2021 local elections, but this week could be the first time it has plunged below that threshold in a national election, forcing it to search for a coalition partner in South Africa’s proportional representation system.
The biggest opposition party, the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), has failed to grow beyond 22 per cent in any national election. A series of high-profile Black politicians have quit the DA, denting its image and strengthening the perception it is dominated by white leaders. The second-biggest opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), is known for its pugnacious rhetoric and radical left-wing policies such as advocating the nationalization and expropriation of industries and farmland.
A new populist party, headed by former president Jacob Zuma, is running fourth in most polls. The party – which named itself after the ANC’s former paramilitary wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”) – wants to abolish the constitution and the current parliamentary system, transferring power instead to traditional tribal kings and queens. Borrowing from the playbook of many U.S. right-wing politicians, Mr. Zuma’s party is throwing mud on the entire South African electoral system, attacking the election commission and claiming it is plotting to rig the vote.
This week, some of Mr. Zuma’s supporters stormed into a ballot-storage site in KwaZulu-Natal province, taking videos and falsely claiming the ballots were pre-marked in the ANC’s favour.
His supporters have also orchestrated a relentless social-media campaign in recent weeks, with tens of thousands of posts claiming the electoral commission is “corrupt” or “compromised.”