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WE salute the African National Congress of South Africa for winning last week’s general elections and hope that its victory will consolidate its hold on that country’s fledgling democracy. With a commanding 62.15 percent margin of victory, the ANC has a clear mandate to govern the affairs of South Africa for the next five years.
Its win comes just 10 months after another liberation movement in the region, Zanu-PF, scored a resounding victory in last year’s harmonised elections, trouncing its main opponent – the MDC-T by regaining its two thirds majority in Parliament after winning 160 seats in the House of Assembly. President Mugabe also won 61 percent of the presidential poll.
With all the votes counted in South Africa’s elections last Friday, the ANC had 62 percent of the vote followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) on 22 percent. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party was in third place with 6 percent. The electoral commission said voting passed off peacefully in most areas, with turnout at just over 73 percent. The elections were the first since the death in December of Nelson Mandela – the country’s first black president – and marked 20 years since the end of white-minority rule. The DA increased its share of the vote from 17 percent in the last election to 22 percent.
In the last election in 2009, the ANC saw a slight drop in support, polling 66 percent of the vote. The DA has been trying to make inroads into the black electorate – its support is mainly concentrated in the Western Cape which has a large white and mixed-race population.
With its latest mandate, the ANC said it would push its much vaunted National Development Plan which focuses on job creation, support for small businesses, overhauling the health system and fixing the water infrastructure. We certainly hope it follows through its plans and that the South African people back their government as it bids to improve their lives.
However, the outcome of the polls point to major grievances by the South Africans as evidenced by their support for a new movement fronted by firebrand former ANC youth leader Julius Malema. The Economic Freedom Fighters surprised all and sundry by claiming more than one million votes just months after they came together to form a party that champions the hopes and aspirations of the poor and downtrodden. Malema and his comrades campaigned on a platform of land reform and nationalisation of mines and their message appeared to have resonated with a wide cross section of South African society.
With 25 seats in Parliament, the EFF are certainly a force to reckon within the political arena and the ANC will certainly have some noisy hecklers with red berets in the National Assembly. Crucially, the ruling party will need to address as a matter of urgency the issues raised by Malema and his party if it is to reverse the losses it suffered to the nascent EFF.
Writing in the Chronicle last week, Harvard scholar Garikai Chengu said contrary to the Westernised, popular belief that South Africa is a “model democracy”, it is one of Africa’s most dysfunctional democracies. He argued that the economic system that underpinned apartheid remains alive and well today noting that whites comprise only 12 percent of the population but, thanks to the racist exploitation of blacks over the past 350 years, still own 75 percent of the country’s land. “US-based bank, Citigroup, recently ranked South Africa as the world’s richest country, in terms of its mineral reserves, worth an estimated $2.5 trillion. Whites and foreigners own a staggering 80 percent of this wealth. South Africa is, unquestionably, the world’s most racially unequal society,” he opined, adding that five white-owned companies still control 75 percent of South Africa’s stock market.
Democracy is not about holding elections simply to choose which particular representatives of the elite class should rule over the masses, he said, but true democracy is about equalising the economy and giving economic power back to the majority.
“The Economic Freedom Fighters party campaigned for the just-ended elections on a platform of three pillars, designed to democratise the economy and overthrow the economic legacy of apartheid. First, expropriation of land for redistribution amongst the masses. Second, nationalisation of mines and banks for the benefit of the people and, finally, free education and health care for all,” Chengu wrote.
In the overall scheme of things, the EFF is the party of the poor and is championing what the ruling ANC has failed to do since 1994. President Jacob Zuma and the ANC need to be alive to the cries of the South African people as expressed through their vote for Malema and the EFF.
Online Reporter