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JOHANNESBURG (AP) – The African National Congress, the ruling party in South Africa, is set to celebrate its victory in national elections. The official announcement will be announced later on Saturday.
With 99.9% of the votes counted, the ANC had 57.5%, said the electoral commission. This was the worst electoral performance ever recorded for the party of the late Nelson Mandela, who has headed South Africa since the end of apartheid 25 years ago. The party won 62% of the vote in 2014.
Election turnout was another low, at 65%, reflecting the frustrations of many South Africans after the corruption scandals around the ANC that led former president Jacob Zuma to resign from the union. 39, last year under pressure from the party. The participation rate was 74% in 2014.
The current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, a protégé of Mandela, vowed to remedy the situation and apologized to the South Africans. But his new five-year term is threatened by Zuma's allies in the ANC leadership, who could pressure the party to overthrow him.
Observers have said that South Africa's economy, the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa, would be further weakened if Ramaphosa were eliminated by his own party. He narrowly won the leadership of the party late 2017, a few weeks before Zuma was expelled.
The widespread disillusionment with the ANC and the long-standing problems of high unemployment and poor delivery of basic services had to give a boost to the main opposition parties in the 1990s. Wednesday election.
But the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, lost 20.7% of votes in 2014, a 20.7% victory. Populist Economic Freedom fighters, who had just won the second time in legislative and presidential elections, gained 10.7 percent, up 6.3 percent five years ago.
The EFF gained the support of the youngest voters, notably by claiming a larger share of South Africa's wealth from the white minority. This has struck a chord in a country where the unemployment rate is 27% and where many of the black majority are struggling to get out of it. The party also promised to expropriate land owned by whites without compensation and to nationalize mines and banks.
In South Africa, the president and parliament are not directly elected. The number of votes obtained by each party determines the number of representatives sent to the 400-seat national legislature. The president of the country is the party leader who gets the most votes.
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