South Africa’s largest party, the African National Congress (ANC), won an absolute majority of votes in the national parliamentary elections the country held on May 8th. But support for the party fell well short of the 62 percent of votes former president Jacob Zuma was able to secure in the previous elections. Current president Cyril Ramaphosa who ran on a platform of combatting intra-party corruption and who ousted scandal-shrouded Mr. Zuma in 2018 is likely to be weakened politically as a result of this lackluster electoral support.
The ANC has governed South Africa since coming to power after the transition from the apartheid regime in 1994. The party has been drawing increasingly on votes of the urban and rural poor whose support the party secures by means of social benefits and patronage relations. By contrast, the country’s black middle class has been alienated by the endemic corruption within the ANC leadership.
In Gauteng, South Africa’s richest province, the ANC retained its majority by less than one percentage point. Gauteng is home to the largest concentration of middle-class voters. Despite its narrow win there, the result is expected to further undermine Mr. Ramaphosa’s position within the party and slow down his reform agenda.