Johannesburg - South Africa is due to hold
parliamentary and provincial elections on Wednesday, amid
frustration with a lack of progress 25 years after the ANC swept to power at the
end of apartheid.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over from
scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma as ANC leader in December 2017, is
trying to restore faith in the governing party after a torrid
decade under Zuma during which its image suffered.
The ANC has won every parliamentary election since 1994 but
saw its share of the vote fall from a high of more than 69
percent in 2004 to 62 percent in 2014, as economic growth
faltered and corruption scandals multiplied.
It is expected to secure another parliamentary majority this
week, but analysts predict that majority could fall, despite
Ramaphosa's efforts to clean up the party's image.
Here are some of the key issues at the elections.
LAND
Land is a highly emotive issue in South Africa, where the
bulk of productive agricultural land has remained in white hands
since the end of apartheid in 1994. A farm industry group and
government argue over exactly how much land is in black hands.
That land was forcibly taken from black people during the
colonial and apartheid eras.
Despite ploughing money into state-backed land transfer
initiatives, the ANC government failed to meet its target of
transferring 30 percent of commercial farmland to black hands by
2014, which fuelled unrest by communities living in squalid
shanty towns demanding better housing and services.
Under pressure from the EFF and more radical elements in the ANC, Ramaphosa last
year launched a process to change the constitution to make
explicit provision for land expropriation without compensation.
Ramaphosa has moved to allay investor fears that any
constitutional changes will result in Zimbabwe-style land grabs
or hurt food output. But Ramaphosa, if he is returned to power,
would need to strike a balance between policies that help quell
simmering discontent among the black majority without derailing
a struggling economy.
CORRUPTION
Years of corruption scandals implicating senior party
officials and government ministers have sullied the ANC's
reputation and could prove costly on May 8 as opposition parties
target malfeasance as a key pillar of their election campaigns.
A state corruption inquiry has heard evidence that
associates of former president Zuma siphoned off huge sums from
state tenders. Zuma has consistently denied wrongdoing.
But the rot is not confined to the upper echelons of power,
having seeped through to provincial and municipal authorities.
UNEMPLOYMENT
The country has some of the worst unemployment levels among
major emerging market economies, trapping millions of people in
poverty and spurring violent protests.
Around 27 percent of South Africans were unemployed in the
fourth quarter last year, according to a narrow definition of
unemployment. Among young black people the jobless rate
is one in two.
The three main political parties have all put job creation
at the heart of their campaigns.
Ramaphosa called a jobs summit last year, where he vowed to
create 275 000 more jobs a year.
That is an ambitious target. A number of companies in the
mining sector alone, which is one of the biggest employers in
the economy, have announced thousands of job cuts in the past
year. State firms and government departments also plan to reduce
their headcount, mainly through severance packages and hiring
freezes.
Election posters are seen on an illegally built shack as pressure mounts for housing in Cape Town. Picture: Mike Hutchings/Reuters
WEAK GROWTH
Economic growth has slowed sharply in recent
years, stretching public finances and sparking fierce
disagreements over the direction of economic policy.
In the decade before the global financial crisis, gross
domestic product (GDP) growth averaged around 4 percent.
But in the past decade it slowed to below 2 percent, which
is insufficient to make a meaningful dent in poverty and is
among the lowest among emerging markets.
Policy uncertainty during Zuma's tenure and a worsening
fiscal picture led to credit rating downgrades to "junk" status
and deterred much-needed investment by foreign and local
companies.
POWER CRISIS
Trust in state electricity firm Eskom among ordinary South
Africans and investors is low as it struggles to keep the lights
on and grapples with a severe financial crisis.
The past year has seen regular bouts of "load-shedding," a
local term for scheduled power cuts, for the first time since
2015 as Eskom has faced recurring problems at its creaking fleet
of coal-fired power stations.
Eskom has high debt levels, with its R420 billion debt
mountain equal to more than 8 percent of the country's GDP.
Ramaphosa has made reforming Eskom a priority, overseeing
the appointment of a new board of directors, pledging
restructuring and promising a R23 billion a year bailout
over the next three years.
But energy experts say that isn't enough to make Eskom
financially sustainable in the long term. The highest levels of
government are discussing additional financial support measures
for Eskom.