When Mmusi Maimane stood on a ladder to hang his first campaign poster here in Johannesburg, a crowd of photographers gathered below, shutters clicking. One of their photographs whipped quickly across Twitter—but not because people were getting excited about Maimane’s campaign. The frenzy had more to do with the man’s physique—and his derrière in particular. “Lawd have mercy!” one excited commenter wrote. As another South African confessed to me, “He’s hot, what can I say?”
Whatever the reason for the sudden attention, a little publicity couldn’t hurt. Maimane is running for the post of Premier of Gauteng, the most populous of South Africa’s nine provinces. The state includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, the rough equivalents of New York and Washington, DC in South African terms. He belongs to an opposition party called the Democratic Alliance, which has struggled to attract black voters, especially in Gauteng, a stronghold of the ruling African National Congress. The DA’s critics label it a “white party,” and at a recent rally in Cape Town, ANC supporters held up signs that accused it of racism. Maimane, a black candidate, seeks to refute this charge: He serves as the party’s national spokesperson and is the DA’s choice to lead the country’s most important province.
The election in May is one of South Africa’s most consequential since apartheid ended in 1991. The ANC has been the dominant party ever since the 1994 elections. It is Mandela’s party, the party that stands for equality, freedom, and justice for all races. These days, however, many South Africans aren’t sure that the ANC has the country’s best interests at heart.
Last Wednesday, the public prosecutor officially accused President Jacob Zuma of “benefiting unduly” from $23 million in state-funded renovations to his home in Nkandla. According to several recent polls, half the country views the ANC as corrupt, and Zuma’s approval rating has plummeted from 77 percent in 2009 to only 46 percent today. The upgrades to his home were supposed to enhance security but ended up including a swimming pool (described on official documents as “firefighting equipment”), an amphitheater, and a cattle enclosure. On Friday, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who was one of the architects of post-apartheid South Africa, joined fellow clerics at a protest against Zuma and the ANC in Cape Town. The ANC leadership, Tutu and the clerics pleaded, must respond to the accusations in the prosecutor’s report. “I’m just glad that the church is standing up for the truth, as we have always done,” said Tutu.
The ANC of today is struggling to uphold Mandela’s legacy, its reputation tarnished by party leaders’ cozy relationships with mining bosses, big international businesses, union leaders, and the police. In the public imagination, ANC bigwigs enjoy lavish comfort in their mansions as they bleed the middle class dry with exorbitant taxes. ANC’s e-toll system for Gauteng’s highways is emblematic, and resonates highly with many of the voters I spoke to here. The program is hugely unpopular—motorists have intentionally stalled traffic for hours in protest—and South Africans post pictures of unpaid e-toll bills on social media to show their displeasure. The monthly cost of the tolls is more than many commuters feel they can afford.
And beyond the corruption, the ANC is facing stiff economic headwinds. Millions of South Africans remain mired in abysmal poverty. The unemployment rate is above 40 percent in five of the country’s nine provinces. Protests over the poor delivery of basic services in some areas have grown frequent and sometimes violent, and the country’s problems with labor unrest have attracted worldwide attention.
Maimane and the DA hope to capitalize on the ANC’s missteps. The DA has gone through a “remarkable transformation,” says Jakkie Cilliers, the director of South Africa’s most prominent think tank. The DA controls the Western Cape, which most South Africans admit is the most prosperous and best-run province in the country. Cilliers predicts the DA will get about 22 percent of the vote in May (up from 13 percent in the last election). And he expects that figure will continue to rise at the ANC’s expense as time goes on.
But it won’t be a cakewalk. The ANC is not exactly about to slide into political irrelevance. It is still by far the most popular party in the country, and even the ANC’s critics admit that South Africa is in much better shape than it was in 1994. The country’s steady 2.5 percent (2012) growth rate outpaced the European Union and the United States. The economy has also diversified by leaps and bounds under ANC stewardship: It was once centered on mining, but is now dominated by financial services. The entire African continent transacts its business in South Africa, with most international players setting up bases of operation in Johannesburg as they invest in booming continental markets. Economic growth has lifted 10 million South Africans into middle-income levels over the past ten years, according to a Goldman Sachs report. Voters remember that it was the ANC that presided over this remarkable record—in a country that was on the brink of civil war when it came to power, no less.
The DA for its part also faces obstacles before it can lay claim to voters’ trust. South Africans generally appear uninterested in opposition parties, of which the DA is the strongest—and the DA in particular is still viewed as a party for whites. Young South Africans—especially the “born frees,” young people who never knew apartheid and who can vote in this election for the first time—seem broadly uninterested in politics, no matter what the party is and no matter how nice a bum a politician might have. The country’s young people are focused on other matters, like finding a job, buying a car, and getting married. They dismiss their elders’ concerns about race and the lingering effects of apartheid. They can read about apartheid in history books, but it doesn’t affect their daily lives. And while they may shake their heads at the government’s corruption, they have little desire to do anything about it.
As the dean of a leading South African business school said: “During apartheid Afrikaners voted for the National Party in election after election after election. In some ways that was about identity. About solidarity. There are elements of that now, with the ANC. It will still get 60 percent of the vote. But it is fragmenting. This is a very difficult thing to keep together.” The ANC is undoubtedly going into this election a shadow of its former self. There’s a palpable sense that people are getting fed up with the ANC’s hegemony, and are becoming cynical about the party’s high-flying rhetoric about freedom and justice and social growth for millions of poor South Africans. Zuma and his inner circle look particularly shabby when compared with Nelson Mandela’s legacy. The DA may not be able to fully capitalize on the ANC’s decline quite yet, but the dissolution of the ANC’s political hegemony is the story to watch in South Africa—in the upcoming May elections, and beyond.