Mandela’s political heirs face their biggest poll test 

South Africa recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of its first democratic election, which brought to power Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela. Post-apartheid South Africa’s “founding father” and high priest of reconciliation, Mandela is revered globally as a secular saint.  

When South Africans head to the polls on May 29, Mandela’s legacy – and that of his political heirs – will face its greatest test yet. In the most consequential election since the country became a democracy, the African National Congress (ANC), which has ruled uninterrupted since Mandela led it to victory in 1994, may finally lose its monopoly on power. 

Notwithstanding negative Western media coverage of post-apartheid South Africa, the country has made some impressive socioeconomic progress over the past three decades. Some 3.4 million housing units have been built, 90 percent of households are now electrified, 82 percent have piped water, and 18.8 million South Africans receive valuable social grants. (It is not all good news, of course: unemployment has risen to 32 percent, while 18.2 million people still live in extreme poverty.) 

Until last year, South Africa was the only African member of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and the G20. And it continues to be the only African country with a strategic partnership with the European Union. 

Moreover, South Africa recently asserted itself on the world stage by accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention in a case at the International Court of Justice. This bold move aligns with the values of the ANC, which has a proud history of supporting self-determination and showing solidarity with fellow liberation movements. 

But after becoming president, Mandela’s vision for promoting human rights and democracy did not survive first contact with reality. In 1995, when the Nigerian military junta of Sani Abacha hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa, an environmental campaigner, Mandela called for an oil boycott and Nigeria’s expulsion from the Commonwealth. Seeking to isolate Nigeria, South Africa instead found itself isolated.  Mandela’s deputy, Thabo Mbeki, subsequently reversed course before assuming power in 1999.

Mbeki envisioned an “African renaissance,” which entailed creating social-welfare programmes at home and establishing a strategic relationship with then-Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to build the institutions underpinning the African Union. 

During the presidency of Jacob Zuma, who was elected in 2009, South Africa gained entry to the BRIC club. Zuma pursued a mercantilist trade policy that sought to position the country as the “gateway to Africa,” even as its White-dominated corporate giants in sectors ranging from communications and mining to supermarkets and fast-food chains spread their reach across the continent. However, state institutions were hollowed out over the course of Zuma’s tenure, and his administration was accused of widespread graft. 

Current President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took office in 2018, has become embroiled in protracted intra-party squabbles and is widely viewed as taking a half-hearted approach to tackling corruption. He has also struggled to revive neglected and mismanaged state institutions such as Eskom, the electricity utility whose collapse has led to rolling blackouts. 

It is clear that successive ANC presidents have squandered their party’s political capital by failing to curb rampant corruption and deliver public services. Support for the ANC has fallen to record lows, which suggests that it could receive less than 50 percent of the vote in the upcoming election and be forced to form a coalition government. 

-- Project Syndicate Adekeye Adebajo is a professor and a research fellow at the University of Pretoria