‘Vote for change’: South Africa elects government as ANC legacy on trial

Thirty years after Nelson Mandela took over as country’s first Black president, the party faces a credibility crisis.

Johannesburg, South Africa – Mpimo Hlavanganwane is far younger than South Africa’s democracy. The 23-year-old grew up in Chiawelo, the same area of Soweto that President Cyril Ramaphosa calls home. Moments before the president arrived at the Hitekani Primary School to cast his ballot in front of the glare of flashing cameras on Wednesday, Hlavanganwane quietly queued to vote.

In the narrative of Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), Hlavanganwane is among the “Tintswalos” — the name given to young South Africans born after the introduction of democracy who benefitted from the ANC government.

That’s not how Hlavanganwane sees it, though.

He has an accounting degree from the University of Johannesburg. But far too often, he himself is a statistic. Like millions of other South Africans, he has no job despite trying for months to land one. In all, 45.5 percent of young people in South Africa are unemployed.

A week before South Africa’s elections on Wednesday, a quarterly survey that measures unemployment by Statistics South Africa revealed the total number of unemployed people in South Africa increased by 330,000 to 8.2 million during the first quarter. The overall unemployment rate is almost 33 percent, the highest in the world.