Election Day Prayer May 29,

Firstpost, 2019

South Africa elections 2019: ANC retains hold over power, but new government faces myriad challenges of unemployment, poverty

A preliminary and exploratory analysis on the elections in South Africa held on 08 May 2019. The final results of the elections in South Africa is a serious debate at the moment. This essay explores some of the issues.

1994

As the Senior Program Officer for the John D. and catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Prexy Nesbitt, a Chicago-based anti-apartheid activist and educator, wrote this piece covering the 1994 general election in South Africa, the first of which was held with universal adult suffrage

Review of African Political Economy

Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2020

Electoral Studies, 2009

South Africa's fourth post-apartheid general election was held on 22 April 2009. Its announcement, 9 February, was followed by the closure of the voter rolls on 12 February, which left just over two months for the electoral campaign. The election followed a turbulent eighteen months during which Thabo Mbeki was replaced by Jacob Zuma as African National Congress (ANC) leader in December 2007 and his effective dismissal as national president by the ANC in September 2008. These events hardened internal ANC divisions, subsequently leading to the formation of a breakaway party, the Congress of the People (COPE) in December 2008. Attention focused on the significance of this challenge to ANC dominance and the impact of COPE on existing opposition parties.

Politeia

On 7 May 2014, South Africa held its fifth national and provincial elections since the end of apartheid in 1994. Despite a degree of discontent, the ANC remained firmly in power, receiving 62.15 per cent of the vote. Frustration about non-delivery of services, autocratic tendencies within the ruling party and widespread corrupt practices did not translate into substantially more votes for opposition parties, except in the Western Cape and Gauteng regions (and a swing vote from COPE to DA in Northern Cape). However, voter mobilisation seems to be stagnating and ANC breakaway parties are not faring particularly well. Twenty years after the end of apartheid, popular discontent with the ANC government has expressed itself in voting apathy, particularly among the "born-free" generation. Just as in 2004 and 2009, non-voters remain the largest group in the South African electorate, outnumbering even the ANC.

South Africans voted in their country's fourth democratic general election on 22 April 2009. The African National Congress (ANC) again secured a substantial victory. It might seem that the 2009 Elections proved to be "business as usual". Yet such a conclusion is unjustified, for events had conspired to generate excitement about this particular contest, which rivalled that leading up to the "liberation election" of 1994. The reasons for this were several, but the most important revolved around Jacob Zuma, who had risen to the presidency of the ANC in December 2007, and the formation of a new party of opposition, the Congress of the People (COPE), by dissidents from within the ANC. In the elections, however, the ANC reasserted its dominance. Even so, the results of the 2009 election at national and provincial level indicate change. The ANC has maintained its electoral dominance, yet its grip on the electorate has been somewhat weakened, while the opposition -although remaining very much in the minority -has consolidated.