South Africa’s Uncertain Election, Explained

In the 30 years that South Africa has been a democracy, none of the country’s past national elections has felt quite as uncertain as this month’s vote.

That’s because this election may, for the first time, challenge the long-standing reign of the African National Congress (ANC), the powerful party that has dominated South African politics since the end of the country’s apartheid system in 1994. For six consecutive elections, the ANC has handily won the majority of the national vote—but that winning streak may soon end. 

As South African voters grow increasingly frustrated with rampant corruption, sweeping unemployment, high levels of crime, and the country’s long-standing energy crisis, some polls suggest that the ANC will fail to secure a majority of the vote. If that happens, the party would likely be forced to cobble together a coalition government with other parties—setting the stage for a new chapter in South African politics. 

“What is at stake now is a reckoning with the fact that the country that we live in now is not the country that we hoped for 30 years ago, and it is a pivotal time to make a decision to break with the past and make bold decisions for change,” said Redi Tlhabi, a South African journalist. 

As South Africa prepares to head to the polls on May 29, Foreign Policy unpacked why this election matters—and what happens if support for the ANC falls below 50 percent. 

1. Who are the major players here?

The ANC, which is currently led by incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa, has long reigned supreme in South African politics dating back to 1994, when the country held its first democratic election and Nelson Mandela became president. 

“In the post-apartheid era in democratic South Africa, the African National Congress has always won by a landslide,” said Simon Allison, the co-founder of the Continent newspaper.

No party comes close to rivaling the ANC’s political heft, although many are ramping up efforts to sway voters in the run-up to the election. “The ANC’s greatest gift is this gift of a weak opposition,” said Ebrahim Fakir, a political analyst and expert in South African politics. The opposition is “fragmented, disparate, uncoordinated,” he added.

The ANC’s biggest challenger is the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA), which is led by John Steenhuisen and secured a little less than 21 percent of the vote when elections were last held, five years ago. Ahead of next week’s vote, the DA formed a multiparty charter of 10 opposition parties in its bid to “finally unseat the ANC.” Yet the party is known for its largely white leadership and has struggled to appeal to Black voters, who make up 80 percent of South Africa’s population.

“They’ve been losing Black leadership in their party,” said Hussein Solomon, a senior professor at the University of the Free State in South Africa. “They are regarded as out of touch, as a white elitist party,” Solomon added. 

Another challenger is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, which was formed around 2013 by former ANC youth leader Julius Malema and won 10 percent of the vote in 2019. The EFF has positioned itself as a radical, Marxist party, pushing for higher corporate taxes, the nationalization of mines, and land redistribution, the latter of which it says will lead to “economic emancipation.”

And the wild card is former President Jacob Zuma, who resigned in 2018 after a nearly nine-year presidency marked by corruption scandals and is set to face trial for corruption charges next year. In April, Zuma made waves when a court cleared him to participate in this election with his recently founded uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK)—although South Africa’s top court recently overturned that decision, ruling that his past criminal conviction prohibits him from being a candidate until five years after the completion of his sentence. In 2021, Zuma was convicted of contempt of court.

Yet, though he can’t run in next week’s election, experts say that Zuma still wields significant political influence behind the scenes. “Zuma is a very powerful politician with a very strong support base in KwaZulu-Natal province,” Allison said. “He spent his time in office, especially as president, developing networks of patronage and loyalty—and those networks did not disappear overnight.” 

2. What do polls say? 

The ANC remains a highly popular party and is still expected to retain a large share of votes. But as public frustration grows and support slips, it is unclear if the party will be able to win the majority, like it historically has. In 2019, the ANC secured nearly 58 percent of the vote—the first time that number dropped below 60 percent. But with this election, polls have suggested that the ANC may not even reach 50 percent, although support has grown in recent weeks. 

“This is an unprecedented election,” said Richard Calland, the Africa program director at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, “because it’s the first election in democratic South Africa where the outcome is uncertain in terms of whether or not there will be a majority party.”

In what is perhaps another reflection of growing public dissatisfaction and disillusionment, voter turnout has steadily dropped since 1994. While nearly 87 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots 30 years ago, just 66 percent did the same at the last election in 2019. There is “increasing disenchantment with politics and with the ANC,” Calland said.

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3. Why have South Africans soured on the ANC?

When South Africa held its first democratic election in 1994, marking the end of apartheid, there was a sweeping sense of hope in the country’s future—and the role that the ANC would play in steering it forward. 

“The election 30 years ago was a seminal moment for South Africa,” said Tlhabi, the journalist. “There was a festive mood, a hopeful mood, a celebratory mood, and a sense that history was happening. We had a lot of hopes as citizens.” 

Three decades later, that hope has morphed into frustration. South Africa had the world’s highest unemployment rate in 2023—and that’s just one part of a long list of issues that have angered voters. More than half of the country’s population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank, while violent crime has surged and rolling electricity blackouts continue to throttle the country. And a legacy of corruption scandals and mismanagement continues to hang over the ANC, further damaging public perceptions of the party.

“In terms of the state of the economy, the state of our foreign relations, just the state of our roads, the level of crime in the country—we cannot carry on like this,” said Solomon, the professor. “Most people feel that they are going backward.”

In one of the ANC’s more recent scandals, Ramaphosa was embroiled in controversy after he failed to report a burglary of enormous sums of foreign cash stashed in a sofa at his game ranch. Although a South African anti-corruption watchdog later cleared the leader of wrongdoing, the scandal dealt a major blow to his reputation, especially because he originally campaigned on an anti-corruption platform. 

Other recent instances of corruption include the case of ANC lawmaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who resigned from her position as speaker of the South African National Assembly last month after she was charged with corruption and money laundering. In 2020, the party’s secretary-general, Ace Magashule, faced charges of corruption, fraud, and money laundering. And Zuma’s presidency was marred by a sweeping corruption scandal involving the country’s multibillion arms deal with a French company.

“The ANC has been the torch-bearer of really shocking corruption acts in our country,” Tlhabi said. “And I think there are people who want to see them pay the price and be held accountable.”

4. What does this mean for how South Africa positions itself on the global stage? 

South Africa has managed a careful geopolitical balancing act as tensions between the United States, China, and Russia heat up, all while positioning itself as the moral leader of the so-called global south. In one of the country’s most prominent moves, South Africa filed a case at the International Court of Justice in December 2023, accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

One major point of friction between Washington and South Africa is the latter’s close ties with Moscow: Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, South Africa has refrained from criticizing Russia at the United Nations, and U.S. officials have accused it of arming the Russian war effort. 

The precariousness of this position was on full display last July, when Johannesburg was hosting a summit of the BRICS bloc (then comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and Russian President Vladimir Putin—who is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC)—was expected to attend. Although he did not ultimately show up for the summit, if he did land in the country, South Africa would have been forced to choose between abiding by its legal obligations to the ICC and currying favor with the West, or damaging relations with a close ally—putting Pretoria in a bind. 

In the event that the ANC falls short of receiving a majority of the vote and must form a coalition government, some experts say the makeup of the group could shape South Africa’s future foreign-policy ambitions. “I think one of the fundamental questions is: What does the coalition look like? Is it more pragmatic, or is it more populist?” said Witney Schneidman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs. If the coalition adopts a more populist stance, he said, “it’s going to exacerbate tensions with the U.S. There’s no question about it.” 

Still, no matter what happens, the ANC will likely try to retain control over the country’s foreign policy, said Allison, the co-founder of the Continent newspaper. 

“South Africa’s foreign-policy positions, although not always particularly well executed, have been relatively consistent,” Allison said. “It tries to walk this sort of middle path between the various superpowers, not being drawn on any one particular side, and trying to kind of retain a sort of moral leadership of the global south.”