South Africa Elections: How the Top Parties Plan to Tackle the Biggest Issues

An end to load shedding, fighting crime and corruption, and creating jobs are some of the issues voters are most concerned about as South Africa heads to the polls. These issues are also highlighted in the manifestos of the major political parties, with each outlining their plans to address them. However, the pressing issues affecting South Africans — the majority of whom are Black, unemployed, disenfranchised, disillusioned, and angry — like land redistribution and economic restitution, are either not addressed or glossed over.

Instead, parties make promises such as “fixing our borders,” which pander to the masses, as opposed to fixing the real causes, are touted as solutions. However, as research suggests, South Africa has the highest income inequality in the world, with a Gini coefficient of 0.67. So, these questions persist: What good will fixing borders do if poor people don’t earn enough to afford land to build long-term wealth on? Or access to capital that allows them to purchase crops to produce food, in effect shielding themselves against food insecurity?

“We need a change. We need more people to be proud of Africa, to be proud of South Africa, to have access. And at the moment, we don't have that,” said Kabelo Moshims, one of the young South Africans who spoke toOkayAfrica during the country’s 30th anniversary of democracy celebration in April.

The rising levels of crime and unemployment are long-standing issues that the ruling party has not succeeded in addressing. Instead, nationwide corruption has caused deep-seated distrust between the state and its citizens. The in-coming government, therefore, has its work cut out.

Rescuing South Africa from unemployment

“The national government’s inability to generate meaningful employment for millions more people stems from the ANC’s misguided belief that the state must exercise control over the economy,” reads the DA’s manifesto. The party’s rescue strategy is to create a Youth Employment Opportunity Certificate that is valid for two years. This certificate will “empower young people to break free from the constraints of the minimum wage, giving them better chances of finding jobs.” This is not a long-term solution to persisting unemployment, currently at 32.9 percent as of the last quarter of 2023. The DA further proposes to lower the unemployment rate by “removing racial targets or quotas in the Employment Equity and the Preferential Procurement Acts,” as well as “promoting the principle of non-racialism,” with the aim of creating an environment where “meritocracy and diversity thrive.”

The ANC promises to “put South Africa to work” by implementing “public employment programmes” in the public, small businesses, and social sectors. They have put their job creation at 2.5 million over a five-year period. And while the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme launched in 2020 has had some level of success, the jobs are oftentimes project-specific, and normally range from a single-day event to a three-month contract.

The ANC also proposes to “expand and institutionalize the National Youth Service in partnership with the SANDF,” but as one commentator opined, the budget will decline this year due to above-normal levels of inflation. They also promise an additional 1 million jobs for small enterprises, entrepreneurs and cooperatives in townships and villages. It is unclear how the party plans to achieve this.

For the EFF, the plan is to establish state-owned companies across housing, security, and cleaning, horticulture, and landscaping, which it claims will provide sustainable jobs. It also says it will procure a minimum of 80 percent of the goods and services used by the state from local companies, and also establish economic zones across the various regions in the country.

Putting an end to load shedding

The ANC says that it has “taken decisive measures to end load shedding” over the last five years. However, South Africans’ lived experience is different. According to The Outlier, there were 1,656 hours of load shedding in 2023 alone. Until about March this year, it wasn’t uncommon for people to experience eight hours of no electricity, on average. Even as load shedding is spoken of as a thing of the past, different areas around the city of Johannesburg remain without power, some for over twenty-four hours.

Treating it as a localized issue that can be blamed on transformers, as the ANC’s Dr. Bandile Masuku does on this BBC Africa podcast, minimizes the impact of load shedding, and overlooks the fact that the transformers are malfunctioning because of failing infrastructure.

To end load shedding, EFF promises to ensure a steady supply of electricity for the next twenty years by fixing infrastructure, adopting clean coal technologies, eliminating preferential electricity tariffs for major corporations, and subsidizing embedded electricity alternatives for public institutions such as schools and hospitals. It also has a comprehensive list of aims in its expansive, 260-page manifesto. Some of them, like funding Eskom’s Research and Development wing, are noteworthy. Others, like investing in the electrification of the entire continent, are seen as overboard and outright infeasible. Where will the money come from?

The DA’s plan is to end Eskom’s monopoly and enable “increased self-generation among consumers, businesses, and municipalities in good standing.” It is not clear how the party plans to implement these changes.

Putting an end to crime

The ANC aims to intensify its war on crime by taking action against “drugs, organized crime, gender-based violence and femicide, infrastructure theft and vandalism, extortion and gangsterism.” But a study shows that the country’s own police force has been implicated in these acts.

The EFF notes the police force’s critical role in maintaining law and order, and promises to commit to “comprehensive overhaul of South Africa's law enforcement system.” It shifts the blame away from police, and instead alleges that “white monopoly capital and their political appointees” are the culprits. It also diagnoses crime as a socioeconomic issue, and plans to economically develop communities and provide quality jobs to criminals. Furthermore, it proposes to incentivise law enforcement officials who arrest violent criminals as well as those whose efforts contribute to the successful prosecution of serious crimes.

The DA argues that the national government’s failure to reduce crime “cannot be solely attributed to socioeconomic factors,” and calls for a “decentralized, locally-accountable police force” instead. It notes that the same government has failed to “meaningfully recognise and integrate private security services, neighborhood watches, and other private role players,” yet overlooks how those very agents have been used to violently remove homeless people and block peaceful protests in their own jurisdiction.

People vote based on personality traits, according to research, and this has indeed been the case time and again in South Africa. Therefore, the view that “it seems that the only reason for drawing up a manifesto is to use the launch of the document as a campaigning tool, rather than concentrating on what is contained in the document,” checks out. There are 70 registered political parties contesting in the elections this year, and the ball is now in the court of the more than 27 million people registered to vote, to decide the leadership of South Africa for the next five years.