South Africa is undergoing the biggest political shift since the end of apartheid

Visitors to Cape Town may be surprised to see a statue of Cecil Rhodes a short walk from the National Parliament.

The presence of a British imperialist so close to the home of South African democracy – in the Rose Garden built on Rhodes’ diamond fortune, no less – is a reminder of the monumental legacy Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress sought to redress when it took power in the country’s first free elections in 1994.

When I visited Parliament during a trip to Cape Town seven years ago, however, the effigies were not burning for the former colonial governor. At the time, then-President Jacob Zuma faced a fresh list of charges against his public and private character, including allegations of an illicit twentieth child and of a $13m villa built in his home village using public money. 

Despite the moderating influence of Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC went to the polls this week with this image of sleaze firmly fixed in the popular imagination. And it shows.

Data from the South Africa-based think tank the Social Research Foundation, widely recirculated by international media, confirms that the party is set to win around 42% of the national vote, fifteen points down on 2019 and twenty points down on 2014. The only party to have governed South Africa in its thirty-year democratic history may have lost its singular appeal. 

Both Ramaphosa and Zuma have overseen a net regression in living standards in the land many once considered to be Africa’s unofficial superpower. Economic growth since the financial crisis has been so pitiful that the population has outgrown it, meaning the average South African is 30% poorer in real terms than a decade ago.

Much of South Africa’s black majority has become frustrated by what it sees as the failure of the party to enact serious reforms to the structure of the country’s economy, including reforms to land ownership from the apartheid era and the nationalisation of the mining companies. The Economic Freedom Fighters Party, a splinter party from the ANC and one of over fifty parties to stand, aims to deliver on such promises.

Others simply believe that its leaders have transformed from insurgent Marxists to insipid marketeers, embracing an economic program that has resulted in the country developing the world’s highest unemployment rate – 32.1% at the end of 2023 – and an enormous expansion in income inequality. South Africa is now the most unequal country in the world by income, according to the widely-cited Gini coefficient.

The ghost of apartheid is obvious to anyone who visits Cape Town today: wealthy all-white neighborhoods around Camps Bay rub uncomfortably close to middle-class “coloured” communities and to the sprawling black townships further south and east on the peninsula. 

That the country is more unequal by income today than in 1993, the last year of apartheid, explains why many are starting to lose faith in Ramaphosa’s “reformist” leadership.

A fragmentation, if not quite a realignment, is now apparent in South African politics. These are the first elections in which independent candidates can stand, giving outside voices a chance. Regional and personal loyalties are at play. Former President Zuma’s new party, uMkhonto we Sizwe, is expected to do exceptionally well in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu Natal. Two other ANC splinter parties, including the EFF, will chip away at the ANC’s majority elsewhere. 

The ANC is by no means finished. It remains the most popular party and the one with the deepest roots in local politics. The likely outcome of this year’s elections is a coalition government with the ANC at its centre. 

If there’s another lesson to draw from Cecil Rhodes’ statue, however, it is that no political regime lasts forever.

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