The 2024 South African national elections: a pivotal moment?

The upcoming national elections in South Africa on 29 May 2024 are deemed the most significant since the 1994 contest that ended apartheid and brought Nelson Mandela to power. Mandela’s party, the African National Congress (ANC) that enjoyed a comfortable majority at the National Assembly for 30 years is challenged by the opposition amid accumulating economic and social issues. Indeed, most polls show the ruling party’s score to fall below 50% of the vote, signaling a shift in the country's political landscape. The ANC's recent history of corruption, inefficiency, and mismanagement, highlighted by issues such as power outages, infrastructure failures as well as the extreme inequality, poverty and crime should weigh heavily on the party’s score despite the historical legacy as the anti-apartheid leader. Beyond the possibility of the minority government and the explicit or tacit coalition with some of the numerous smaller parties, one of the election’s potential outcomes would force the ANC into an alliance with a bigger opposition party (far-left AFF, conservative DA, or MK Party associated with the former president Jacob Zuma). While all these options represent significant drawbacks politically for the ruling party, the rapprochement with the economically pragmatic (and more liberal) DA could be seen as preferable by the markets although seems challenging ideologically, while exactly the opposite can be said about the alliance with the EFF, a leftist faction of the Young ANC ex-leaders. Finally, bringing back to the government J. Zuma (as he remains popular in the 2nd most populous province KwaZulu-Natal) does not seem politically feasible for the ANC leadership.