Can ANC reform?

IN MUNICIPAL elections last Wednesday, South African voters handed the ANC its worst setback since the end of apartheid in 1994. The vote could presage major political change when South Africans go to the polls in national elections in 2019.

A record number of South Africans, about 26 million, registered to vote. The ANC’s strength in South Africa’s rural areas helped it preserve a slight majority of municipal seats – about 54% overall, a big drop from 62% five years ago.

President Jacob Zuma deserves much of the blame. He spent millions of rands in public money building himself a grand estate, and put cronies and relatives in senior positions.

Twenty-two years after apartheid ended, South Africa remains a deeply unequal country, its black majority stuck in grinding poverty. Schools are failing, and more than a quarter of South Africans are unemployed. Voters punished Zuma in his home town, Nkandla, where the ANC lost to the IFP.

Last Wednesday, South Africans demonstrated their faith that democratic change could deliver a better future.

The national election outcome in 2019 will be determined by how well the parties that unseated the ANC in the municipal elections actually perform, and whether the ANC is capable of reforming itself in the face of a such a rebuke.

A first step would be to force President Zuma to resign.