If partial results from this week’s election in South Africa stay the course, the free hand the African National Congress (ANC) has enjoyed on the national political stage for 30 years could well be coming to an end.  

The country’s electoral commission has seven days to declare the full results following Wednesday’s vote, but early returns suggest the party of Nelson Mandela that swept to power in 1994 after the end of apartheid may be about to lose its parliamentary majority for the first time.  

With just 20 per cent of the vote declared, news agencies were reporting ANC support running between 42 and 45 per cent. Their closest challenger, the pro-business Democratic Alliance, was reported at about 25 per cent support. 

If the predictions hold, the ANC will still emerge with the most seats, but would likely, for the first time, have to seek coalition partners to govern, signaling a major shift in South African politics.

ANC’s coalition options

Given the myriad opposition parties, it’s hard to predict what that coalition might look like. Some 50 opposition parties stood in the national ballot.  

“The ANC may want to cobble together a coalition with smaller parties that are unlikely to contest its core policy offering than to go into a coalition with either the Economic Freedom Fighters [EFF] or [uMkhonto we Sizwe] MK party on the left or even the Democratic Alliance [DA] on the right,” said Ongama Mtimka, a political analyst and lecturer associated with the Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. 

“Only as a third and fourth option would they consider going into coalition with either the Economic Freedom Fighters or the Democratic Alliance,” he said.  

The Marxist EFF is one of the parties that analysts agree will have siphoned support from the ANC, although in keeping with levels from previous elections where support has sat at around 10 per cent.  

The EFF’s leader, Julius Malema, a former ANC youth deputy expelled from the party and criticized by many for his ostentatious lifestyle, advocates nationalizing South African mines and forcibly redistributing land and wealth to the country’s black majority.   

Mtimka says the EFF’s growth remains marginal, but that he is attracting what author and journalist Fiona Forde has called “an inconvenient youth.”

“A youth that doesn’t buy into the promise of a democratic South Africa because many of them feel they have been labeled ‘born free’ when in fact their lived realities are to the contrary,” said Mtimka.  

Economic struggles

Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa is still struggling to lift people out of poverty. In 2022, the World Bank declared it to be the most unequal country in the world in terms of the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

About one-third of South Africans are out of work, many of them under the age of 30.  

“I think that where young people might put their mark on are all these new parties that have emerged in the last two years or so that do present a much more hip, urban base,” said Zwelethu Jolobe, an associate professor at Cape Town University. 

“They don’t really have rallies in the way that the ANC and the DA do,” he said. “They use a lot of social media and they sort of talk to the kind of things that people like to talk about, right?”  

WATCH | South Africa holds national election:

South African holds national election as ANC’s popularity wanes

The party that has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid is in danger of losing its parliamentary majority in national elections. Results won’t be known for days, but a growing list of problems has left many voters angry.

 Another party siphoning votes from the ANC is uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), backed by former President Jacob Zuma, whose scandal-soaked administration came to an end when he was forced to resign in 2018. 

Zuma himself was barred from standing in the current election by South Africa’s top court, but he’s thrown his weight and an enduring populist appeal behind the party that takes its name from the ANC’s old paramilitary wing.  

Both Zuma and Malema have managed to play a two-sided game in the election, criticizing the ANC’s current leadership under South African President Cyril Ramaphosa while claiming to be the true representatives of the ANC’s core values.  

After Wednesday’s vote, Ramaphosa tweeted that “the people of South Africa will give the African National Congress a firm majority.”  

If they don’t, Mtimka says Ramaphosa should prepare the way for his departure.  

“I would say that he should be a caretaker president who simply helps us to transition from the murky waters of a contentious transition period and then leverage that political capital that he has to position a younger and more vibrant successor,” Mtimka said. 

ANC’s future 

Jolobe says he believes that despite the potential political shift in South Africa, people’s trust still lies with the ANC. 

“Because at least you know who they are and you know what they can or cannot do,” he said. “There is a lack of trust, however, when it comes to the other parties, including the DA, the EFF and the rest of them.”

He contends that the ANC deserves to win the election despite having “performed badly” over the last 20 years — although for backhanded reasons.  

“Other parties have not been able to make capital out of the shortcomings of the ANC. [So] they do deserve to win, but they do not because of what they do, but because of what other people don’t do.”  

Regardless of the final results, it is increasingly clear that time has formed an inevitable wedge between the so-called “born free generation” and those who fought to be free, making it harder for the ANC to rely on its anti-apartheid credentials from the past to paper over failings in the present.