South Africa's ruling ANC party, one of Africa's last surviving liberation movements, faces its harshest test in the forthcoming elections, and could for the first time in 30 years lose its parliamentary majority, according to opinion polls.
For young voters, navigating the party's past liberation credentials and present every day economic hardship is getting harder.
After leading the fight against apartheid, the party faces pressure over a stagnant economy, high unemployment rate, alleged corruption within its ranks and an electricity crisis that has crippled Africa’s most industrialised economy.
Slow growth
The state of the economy will no doubt be on top of the minds of voters as they head to polling stations for the general elections on May 29.
The pace of job creation has not kept up with the growing numbers of job seekers, resulting in an unemployment rate of 32% in 2023, according to World Bank figures released last month.
The National Treasury has acknowledged that a 0.8% annual growth since 2012 has been insufficient to reduce poverty and unemployment.
“The economy hasn't been growing even though we had the pandemic and global financial crisis,” said David Monyae, a political science professor.
“The state itself was unable to do certain things that other states were able to do under this kind of global and national conditions.”
The problems of electricity, a lack of jobs and low participation of young people in governance over the years, have caused disenchantment among young voters who are ''unlikely'' to cast their votes in the elections, Otsile Nkadimeng head of a youth political awareness group, 'SoWeVote' said.
Electricity crisis
Most young people don't ''see themselves reflected in government,'' he tells TRT Afrika. Young people ''don't know the ANC as the liberators of the country,'' Nkadimeng says.
Nkadimeng urges his fellow young people to come out and vote in the elections despite the challenges.
In South Africa, slow growth has been partly triggered by electricity shortages that have constrained economic activity since 2007. The country’s power stations are aging following decades of neglect, and replenishing them is projected to take two more years.
Power cuts, known locally as load shedding, have reduced mining and manufacturing production which are the economy’s key pillars. The problem has also increased the cost of business and affected crucial public service delivery.
The World Bank estimates that the cumulative duration of the outages, each lasting up to four hours, was equivalent to 289 days in 2023 alone.
This severe electricity shortfall has affected economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic which hit the country the hardest across the continent.
Alleged corruption and cronyism is also a major problem. In 2022, damning reports from a four-year investigation into alleged corruption under former leader Jacob Zuma's presidency were handed to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The latest high profile case involves National Assembly speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula who resigned from the position amid an investigation into alleged corruption during her tenure as defence minister. She denies any wrongdoing.
South African anti-corruption watchdog, Corruption Watch, has denied President Ramaposa's claim that incidents of corruption had reduced during his first term.
"The levels of corruption have been on an upward trajectory for over a decade," Karam Singh, executive director said early this month.
Violent crimes
The high unemployment rate has fuelled crime as well as anti-foreigner sentiment.
The country recorded almost 84 murders per day between October and December 2023. The result is that inequality levels remains among the highest in the world with Black people being the most affected.
A national action plan to combat xenophobia and discrimination has not reduced incidents of violence, Human Rights Watch said this month. It warned that anti-immigrant rhetoric used by politicians during the election campaign risks fueling more xenophobic violence
The opposition Democratic Alliance party says the economic stagnation could to persist and worsen the living standards of South Africans if the ANC continues in power.
But the ANC says, overall, it has taken steps to improve the well-being of citizens over the years and promises a better future.
Forecasts by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show South Africa is set to reclaim its status as the continent’s largest economy in 2024.
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