Next month, South Africa will hold what many people are calling the country's most important election since the end of apartheid. But can the A and C remain a powerful force in the country. From Bloomberg News, I'm Jennifer's Abasaga and this is the Next Africa Podcast. When Nelson Mandela came to power, he made the promise of an efficient state led economy that would uplift the country for all South Africans, no matter their color.
Their time to build is upon us. We have a plus that saved our political emancipation. We ploods ourselves to liberate all our people from the continued fonders of poverty, deprivation, saf sander and other discrimination.
But three decades after that promise, the ruling African National Congress is facing the real prospect of losing its national majority for the first time since it came to power in nineteen ninety four. The ANC led government is facing major challenges. The economy isn't growing.
The essay economy has tended to consistently underperform.
Unemployment and poverty remain persistent, and crippling power cuts load shedding as they're known here, have become the norm.
It comes expecting worst case scenario twenty six days of one to two hour power cuts.
This week, with our reporter Stembile Stele, we take a step back and look at what happened over the past thirty years and why the future of the ANC as a major party is at risk. Stimbile, thanks so much for being here. It's a busy season for you, so appreciate your.
Time from them.
You've been covering politics here in South Africa for a number of years. Can you just tell us a little bit about where we're at right now with the ANC in terms of the ruling party being the leader of this country.
So I think most people will come to North South Africa, this tiny country at the bottom of the African consonants because of the events that led us to the nineteen ninety four which is the beginning of the democratic governments.
It was the.
Transition from the apartheight regime, white minority rule which oppressed the majority of black South Africans for the longest period of time.
The prohibition of the African National Congress, the Pan Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party and a number of subsidiary organizations is being rescended.
So the current ruling party, the African National Congress. They are this liberation movement, in fact, the oldest one on the African continents, and they end up engaging in this
armed struggle against the apartheight regime. That background is important because you have people that have been soldiers, that have been so called guerrillas of warfare coming into the state now and having to engage in a very different way, having to engage with state machinery and trying to translate the idealism into a government that works for the majority of people that have not had access to a number of for the duration of the apartheid regime thirty years on.
And they're very much in trouble in terms of what they have been able to make good on, in terms of the promises that they made and what they've not been able to do.
So let's just dig into that. You've been in the middle of this campaign and we're hearing all of these parties talking about what the ANC has been able to make good on and what they haven't. I mean, can you give us maybe your your report card for the ANC up into this point.
So it's Africa's most industrialized economy, but it's hobbled by I think what is both structural and self inflicted challenges which have over time resulted in this really anemic growth. In the early days of the anc led government to under presidents at Sabombigie and Nelson Mandela, you had growth at around three maybe four percent in a good year. But thirty years later things are looking really different. Inequality
has remained, if not worsened. Unemployment at the moment stands at thirty two percent, and the majority of those are young people who are expected to votes come May twenty nine.
What we've also seen because of this lack of economic growth, of course, is this unemployment breeding poverty and so as a result try and stave off a poverty that could be settling into the country, government has really gone to pains to expand its social security nets, and so you have a situation now where just under half of the
country relies on some form of a social grant. And that's really because the economy is growing at insufficient rate to meet the growing demands of the majority of South Africans.
So Stambila, I mean, that's a long list of challenges that have gotten in the way of any sort of growth for this economy. I mean, this couldn't have happened overnight, right, I mean, how did we actually get here?
When the ANC comes into power, then inherits a lot of apartheid regime's debt as well. But there comes a point obviously where they kind of settle into government, they figure things out, but they're still very flat footed when it comes to certain issues. So we have these ideals, these policies, We thought that this could work, and even when they realize that within the confines of state machine
they can't do those things, they're flat footed. And I think then also a part of that in the background, you have corruption, right that obviously existed in the part he had regime as well. It probably existed under the first two presidents, but it really becomes laid bare with the phenomenon and the election of President Jacob Zuma in two thousand and eight, when he succeeds Tabombeggie, who is then recalled from governments.
I think it's really interesting to bring up Jacob Zuomer, especially because now we're seeing him back in the political spotlight now that he is able to contest in the selection. But when we think about the president and the years of sort of degradation under Jacob Zuma. I mean, just how bad did it get Jacob Zuma.
Like I say, he's not alone in this corruption that takes place. It is within the ranks of the ANC, it's throughout various levels of government, but he in some ways becomes the poster boy for it, especially to the extent that the ANC is willing to protect him on so many occasions when he is found to have done rondoing.
There is this groundstole that happens throughout the country. People from completely different backgrounds, from a private sector, from government's ordinary citizens are taking to the streets in their numbers, basically trying to force the ANC's hand with the hopes that they will force Jacob Zumer to leave office. In South Africa's President, Jacob Zumer's fate is set to be sealed later today. While South Africa's President Jacob Zumer has
survived yet another motion of no confidence in parliament. It doesn't happen, but there are numerous attempts that happen, certainly at the level of parliament, in which lawmakers, after a series basically of allegations that are put before him or a series of wrongdoings, they do try and remove him through a motion of no confidence, in which the ANC again protects him and defends him and staves off those motions of no confidence using their majority in the House.
In early twenty eighteen, Jacob Zuma is then essentially forced to resign from government.
And your decision has been made by the ANC was the fact is that I have now been compelled to resign by way of a motion of no confidence.
Let's move then to the current President, Zero Romoposa, because you know he too has a long and storied history within the ANC. But how did his presidency then sort of differ from what we saw from the Zuma years.
So he succeeds Jacob Zuma after any Lexi conference of the ANC in twenty seventeen. And this conference comes on the back of kind of this ground swell of opposition towards Jacob Zumer. You have people that you would never think would be in the same room gathering on the streets to protest against Jacob Zuma, saying he needs to go.
And so the ANC essentially relieves the country of this burden that is Zuma, and he comes into power on the back of this campaign to renew the A and c to root out corruption, to take a tougher stance on the senior leaders that are implicated in wrongdoing. And so I think he does have an understanding, probably not to the full extent, but he has a sense when he comes into power that he's got this mammoth task that is ahead of him.
Now, cleaning up clearly is going to be quite a mammoth task, but we've got to start somewhere.
What then constrains him is really himself. He delays in taking I think, very important decisions. It creates an environment of uncertainty that even business people and investors that really were looking to him to move things forward, they then start to doubt his ability to do so because he just doesn't act when he should be doing so.
I think one of the terms I've heard is rahmophoria.
I think it's how exciting and hetty it was when he came into power with all of these great expectations that were set upon him.
Wow, and to now go from this crossroads really for this party that, as you mentioned, he's been trying to keep together. Let's talk about the other options, Tambile, because there's a lot of them, right, I mean, how many parties.
Are so more than three hundred and fifty parties are eligible to contest the SAIS elections, not them, but it is a historic vote in that two ways. One is for the first time that independent candidates are able to contest national elections. It doesn't mean that any of them are likely to become president, of course, because South Africa doesn't vote directly for presidents. It's the parliamentarians that do that. So that's the one sort of logistical addition that we
have to this election. But also just this amount of people that are vying to be an alternative to the ANC.
You know, we're not going to go through all of the parties, but maybe give us some insight into maybe the biggest the biggest threats to the ANC in terms of other political parties that people are looking to other options, as you mentioned, so we.
Speak about one of the things that maybe would have slowed down the decline of the ANC is this brand loyalty that people have to it. But I do think that another factor is the absence of a credible opposition to the ANC. But maybe just to go through two of the most recognized we have the main opposition, the Democratic Alliance. They achieved around twenty percent in the last election.
And the third biggest party is the very left leaning Economic Freedom Fighters, which is the breakaway from the ANC. It was a breakaway led by their former youth leader Julius Malima, and they have about ten percent of the votes. And so I think those are the main options that people will be looking at when it comes to deciding whether or not to give their votes to the ANC or not.
We were talking about Jacob Zumer earlier. His party is surprisingly doing much better than most people would have expected. I mean, do they have any chance in getting potentially better results on election day?
He is throwing his weight behind this new party from Condoss Party, and so it's really difficult right to say what a new party is going to do, especially when they've formed five months before an election. Or what he's lying on is his popularity, right, People, particularly in the province his home province of woslom Natal, are just extremely taken by him, despite all of the allegations of longdoing.
It's on the basis of that popularity that so many polls then predict that he could very much take a huge chunk of the ANC's vote. I would take them with the brick of salt. It's really difficult because popularity doesn't always translate to someone actually going out and voting for you.
Maybe we can look at the various scenarios, because you sort of started touching on the options right for potential coalitions here, Maybe we will start with the most likely of options that we could see, and then you give us your insight into what you think else people are anticipating for.
So I think the first scenario is one in which the ANC just makes over the line, so in which case nothing changes. The second scenario is in which the ANC falls below fifty percent, and in that case it relies on one or two smaller parties which are unlikely to dictate any policy changes. And in that case, the ANC then kind of retains its policy trajectory, and I
think there's certainty specifically from an economic perspective. The third scenario is one in which the ANC declines below forty five percent, reaches maybe the early forties, if not lower than US, which I think is unlikely, but it depends
on the day. Right, things are quite fluid, and I think that's also the caveat when it comes to these poles and these predictions coming to The third scenario then is one in which the ANC needs a much bigger party, and obviously the risk when you work with a bigger party is that it will want to throw its weight around a little bit, it will want to make a demand.
So we had the day factor Prime Minister as it were, it's an unofficial position in the country, but a staunch ally of President Silamapaosa, and that's the A and C chairperson guerde mandashe coming into the office and we obviously put all of these scenarios to him. The one that he obviously does not want to hear is the prospects of the ANC falling below fifty percent, and he was clear that from the ANC perspective, they can't be defeates.
We're not planning for a coalition. We're planning for a majority, and that's what we're working for.
And so they are campaigning to win. He's saying that collisions for all of the talk that's happening around them, they're not a plan for the A and C, but rather a consequence for all of the scenario planning that people are looking at. It means nothing until the electoral body actually announces that this is what parties have and it's from there that we'll see this horse trading then
furiously begin to happen behind the scenes. Maybe worth noting that after the May twenty nine elections, once the election results come in, unlike most other countries where you have a couple of months to form a government, South Africa's constitution requires that it be constituted within fourteen days, and so you can imagine how Manica period that's going to be given all of these conflicting views and ideas and formations, everyone struggling basically to get a seat for themselves at
the table.
Yeah, and for you as our political Eco gov reporter here, But Cimbile, honestly really appreciate your time, your insight, and we know we're going to have you back on as we get closer and closer to May twenty nine, So appreciate you.
Looking forward to it. Thank you very much.
As she was mentioning unchartered waters for much of the country and for many of the politicians who are going to be contesting and campaigning in this election, what we've been hearing time and time again from both the private and the public sector is what's been happening is not working for this economy. As we mentioned, unemployment sits close to thirty two percent, and so it really seems like
the consensus is there needs to be a change. But the question really is for all of us who are going to be watching very closely with this election, is what is that change, what does it look like, and who are the people that are going to be at the table when those changes actually start to take place. This program was produced by Christopher Pitt and Leone Wedrago. I'm Jennifer Zabasancho. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.