Ruling ANC under threat as South Africa heads to polls

Socio-economic ills put party’s 30-year dominance at risk

- GERALD IMRAY , MOGOMOTSI MAGOME , FARAI MUTSAKA

South Africans have begun voting at schools, community centres and in large white tents set up in open fields in an election seen as their country’s most important in 30 years – and its seventh since apartheid.

At stake is the three-decade dominance of the African National Congress (ANC) party, which led South Africa out of apartheid’s brutal white minority rule in 1994. It is now the target of a new generation of discontent in a country of 62 million people – half of whom are estimated to be living in poverty.

After casting his vote, president Cyril Ramaphosa said he had no doubt his ANC would win with a majority and remain in government. Africa’s most advanced economy has some of the world’s deepest socio-economic problems, including one of the worst unemployment rates at 32 per cent. The lingering inequality, with poverty and joblessness disproportionately affecting the Black majority, threatens to unseat the party that promised to end it by bringing down apartheid under the slogan of a better life for all.