2019 was the most apathy-dominated South African election of the post-apartheid era. There are 35.9 million eligible voters in South Africa, but this year only 26.7 million of them – 74% - took the trouble to register for national and provincial elections. Worryingly, in a country with a youthful population and where democracy is still pretty new for most people, 6 million of these 9 million unregistered potential voters are under 30. Also troubling for democrats was that only 65% of registered voters bothered to vote.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) secured 57.5% of the votes in the national election, 3.6% higher than it managed the last time the country went to the polls, which was for municipal elections in 2016. In 2016, the disastrous Jacob Zuma was still president and public revulsion at his government had reached the point where the ANC managed to lose Johannesburg, Tshwane (Pretoria) and Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) to coalitions led by the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). Cyril Ramaphosa’s subsequent ascendancy to the presidency has arrested the ANC’s decline in support. But the ruling party’s share of the vote was still nearly 5% lower than in the 2014 general election, and means the ANC loses 19 seats in the National Assembly, bringing it down to 230.
All in all, it was hardly a great result for the ANC.
