Great expectations

For the first time since the end of apartheid, the African National Congress failed to win a majority in South Africa’s general elections on May 29. Three decades earlier, the party of Nelson Mandela led yearslong negotiations to steer the country’s peaceful transition from white rule to democracy—before dominating South Africa’s first free elections in 1994 with 63 percent of the vote.

But that was then. Since 2004, the ANC’s share of the vote has declined in every election, as the country’s economy has deteriorated and corruption has grown—to a point of the president stashing millions in mystery cash in his sofa. Today, South Africa has the world’s highest unemployment rate—32 percent—and, by some measures, the world’s highest level of income inequality. More than half the county’s population lives in poverty, and since 2012, its GDP has dropped back to 2005 levels, adjusted for inflation. The ANC government, meanwhile, struggles to provide electricity and running water. Last year, the average South African citizen spent almost five hours a day without power.

What went wrong?

Hussein Solomon is a senior professor of political studies and governance at the University of the Free State, in Bloemfontein, South Africa. As Solomon sees it, the ANC of 2024 is now far from Mandela’s party or the organization that spent decades fighting apartheid. Once known for its educated, professional leaders, the party has transformed into a cadre of lifelong partisans. Public impressions of the party have changed, too, with younger generations having little or no memory of black South Africans’ battle for freedom. The elections in May, Solomon says, revealed that voters are increasingly split along tribal and geographic lines—with long-ranging consequences for the country’s still-young democracy …

Michael Bluhm: Why did the ANC lose so many voters?