(Bloomberg) — The 56,000-seat Moses Mabhida Stadium in the South African port city of Durban was packed for the unveiling of the ruling African National Congress’ election manifesto.
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“We are supported by millions and millions of people,” President Cyril Ramaphosa told the cheering crowd in February, mocking the idea that his party was a spent political force after three decades in power. “The ANC remains the party par excellence.”
In the weeks that followed, the arena, built for the 2010 World Cup, was full again. But it was the ANC’s rivals, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters, who brought it into full force.
As the country faces its toughest elections since the end of apartheid in 1994, the ANC is facing competition like never before. A series of opinion polls show the party is at risk of losing its parliamentary majority and control of several provinces on Wednesday, a response to sloppy government services and rampant poverty, unemployment and crime.
The three provinces where South Africa’s largest cities are located have different political dynamics and will be the key determinants of the biggest winners and losers this week.
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 top leaders of the ruling party went door to door in the region’s townships to drum up support. They received a litany of complaints about a lack of jobs and ineffective city council members.
“You shouldn’t find me here in the middle of the day during working hours, but I do that because I don’t have a job,” 39-year-old Thuli Khawula told ANC president Gwede Mantashe, who was visiting her home. in Sitholinhlanhla, about 170 kilometers (106 miles) north of Durban. “Those are some of the things that make me question whether I should still vote for the ANC.”
The ANC took control of KwaZulu-Natal from the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in 2004 and won 54% of the vote there in 2019, but has lost a number of recent municipal by-elections to its resurgent rival.
Meanwhile, a new party led by former president Jacob Zuma is also attracting the crowds. The charismatic 82-year-old led South Africa for almost nine scandal-filled years before he was ousted in 2018 and quit the ANC in December. He hails from KwaZulu-Natal and remains popular among his fellow Zulu speakers.
A poll published this month by MarkData on behalf of broadcaster eNCA showed Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party, or MKP, with 46.4% support in the province, the IFP 14.5% and the ANC just 11.1 %. A range of other surveys also show the ANC losing ground, although some analysts have questioned their 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 ceasefire was agreed.
Since then, numerous political assassinations have taken place in the province, amid a bitter rivalry over government posts and contracts. It was the epicenter of deadly riots that broke out in July 2021 after Zuma was arrested for refusing to testify to a corruption inquiry.
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Gauteng, the smallest but most populous of the nine provinces, is also crucial to the fate of the ANC. Although the party has governed the central region since 1994, it won just over half the vote there in 2019, and the MarkData poll shows that this year it has fallen to 41%.
Gauteng is home to 24% of the electorate and includes Johannesburg, the largest city, Pretoria, the capital, and Ekurhuleni, a major industrial centre. All three are ruled by shaky coalitions that struggle to deliver basic services.
The ruling party has pushed hard in recent months to rebuild support in the region, implementing plans to create 500,000 temporary jobs and repairs to hundreds of faulty transformers to reduce electricity outages. During the campaign, her officials have handed out free holiday 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, echoes the view of many older black voters – that despite the ANC’s shortcomings, they cannot imagine voting for anyone else.
“This is Nelson Mandela’s celebration,” she said. “We went to jail for this party when it fought with us to be free from the oppression we faced from the white government. It won’t always be perfect, but I’m alive, I’m healthy, I’m taken care of – that’s because of the ANC.”
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), poses the biggest challenge to the ANC in Gauteng. Yet the EFF’s calls to nationalize banks and mines and place all land under state custody have endeared it to more and more residents of black townships, whose living standards have improved little since the end of apartheid.
ActionSA, which is led by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba and won 16% of the city’s vote in the 2021 municipal elections, is also expected to put in a strong performance in Gauteng, most likely at the expense of the DA. The MKP will take some votes away from the ANC and the EFF.
The politics of the Western Cape, which also includes the tourist center of Cape Town, differs significantly from the rest of the country. It is the only province where the ANC does not have an outright majority, while the DA has been in power since 2009.
The DA’s dominance is being eroded by smaller rivals, including the Patriotic Alliance. The party was founded in 2013 by Gayton McKenzie, a reformed criminal turned businessman, and has made inroads into mixed and rural areas. Then there is the Freedom Front Plus, which has increased its support among the Afrikaner community.
The DA also risks losing the support of the Muslim community, which makes up 5.2% of the Western Cape’s population, for its refusal to take a strong stand against Israel over the Gaza war, as the ANC did.
Residents of the gang-infested areas around Cape Town say they want the province’s next administration to prioritize tackling rampant crime.
“Our life is miserable, it’s terrifying,” said Nomawethu Bongo, 71, an ANC supporter living in the working-class district of Philippi. The gangs “are not afraid of law enforcement. They run things here,” she said.
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–With help from Paul Richardson, Leonardo Nicoletti, Michael Ovaska, Amanda Cox and Dean Halford.
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