South Africa’s 2014 elections

Aside from a few incidents considered by observers to be minor, the elections were thought to be free and fair and free of intimidation, a lesson for Nigerian politicians, notorious for electoral malpractices.  The ANC’s victory didn’t come as a surprise as the general belief in South Africa was that it would win; the only […]

Aside from a few incidents considered by observers to be minor, the elections were thought to be free and fair and free of intimidation, a lesson for Nigerian politicians, notorious for electoral malpractices.  The ANC’s victory didn’t come as a surprise as the general belief in South Africa was that it would win; the only question was by how big a margin.
Dire predictions that the ANC would win but get a severe electoral drubbing proved to be unfounded. It turned out the party obtained 62 per cent of the vote, a decline from 65 percent in the election of 2009. The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) came a distant second, securing 16 percent of the vote, but an increase in its vote tally compared to its result in 2009. The ANC retains control of eight out of nine provinces except for the Western Cape, the DA’s stronghold.
Twenty-nine parties took part in the elections, but only 13 of them won enough votes to be represented in parliament.  The South African electoral system is based on proportional representation, allowing for smaller parties to be represented in parliament.
The ANC won 249 seats, while DA won 89 seats, followed by ANC’s erstwhile firebrand Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Front (EFF) with 25 seats.
For a party formed less than a year ago by the expelled former ANC youth leader, the EFF’s showing is impressive, dislodging the DA as the main opposition party in the legislatures of two provinces, Limpopo and North West. The EFF could play a major role in South African politics in the coming years, given its appeal to significant segments of South Africans who feel excluded from the gains of independence and black majority rule.
The ANC’s track record in tackling poverty and inequality since 1994 has been mixed. It has provided housing, water and electricity to millions of South Africans but its critics say the government’s response has been too slow in a country where the people feel they have waited for too long for improvement in their living conditions.
The policy of ensuring Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is generally acknowledged to have benefited only a few, creating a class of politically well- connected millionaires while the vast majority of the black underclass is still mired in chronic poverty.
Successive South African presidents since the end of white minority rule have been in a dilemma of trying to improve the lot of the dispossessed black majority on the one hand and at the same time managing not to alienate foreign capital represented by the white minority who control the bulk of the economy.
President Jacob Zuma’s integrity has been questioned in recent years, particularly as a result of Nkandlagate, the scandal in which the president was accused of illegally spending millions of dollars to refurbish his country home at Nkandla, KwaZulu Natal, which he justified on ‘’security’’ grounds. However, this did not appear to have played any significant part in the ANC’s share of the vote.  
In a speech after the results were announced, Zuma said that his victory confirmed how deeply rooted the ANC had become in the hearts and minds of the majority of South Africans. That may be so, but the reduced vote, though marginal, and the ascendancy of activists opposed to ANC policies, portend a gradual shift in loyalties that may escalate in subsequent elections unless  there is action and impact in bridging the poor-rich gap.
The renewed mandate should provide the government the impetus to do just that and make life better for all South Africans.