Africa > Southern Africa > South Africa > Zuma, economy in focus as South Africa holds local elections

South Africa: Zuma, economy in focus as South Africa holds local elections

2016/08/03

South Africa holds local government elections on Wednesday in what looks likely to become a referendum on President Jacob Zuma's scandal-plagued leadership and on an economy forecast to stagnate this year.

The African National Congress (ANC) has held sway in the main cities since white-minority rule in Africa's most industrialized country ended 22 years ago. Any defeats could erode the party's support before a general election in 2019.

Opinion polls see a close race in those cities, including the capital Pretoria, economic-hub Johannesburg and the symbolic Nelson Mandela Bay named after the anti-apartheid icon.

"The way the opposition parties have carried out their campaigns and the way the ANC has responded, show the vote will be a referendum on Zuma and the performance of his government on the national economy as well as the local level," BNP Paribas Securities South Africa political analyst Nic Borain said.

Zuma, who has been beset by a series of scandals, survived an impeachment vote in April after the Constitutional Court said he breached the law by ignoring an order to repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent on renovating his home.

In December, he was widely criticized for changing his finance minister twice in a week, sending the rand plummeting and alarming investors.

Zuma has rejected the accusations, saying he is fit to lead. The ANC party backed him to defeat an impeachment vote.

But anger is rising in a country where one in four people are unemployed and the central bank expects zero growth this year. The economy is on the brink of a recession after shrinking by 1.2 percent in the January-March period.

That, on the back of a series of political scandals around Zuma, is stoking fears of a downgrade by ratings agencies to "junk" status in reviews expected by December.

People are feeling the pinch as the economy treads water.

"I'm in this shack because I can't afford rent," said Sibabalo Sibisi, who lives in Alexandra township, a shantytown near Sandton, Africa's richest suburb in Johannesburg.

"It's not nice living like this, with no water or electricity, and when it rains we have to use buckets to scoop the water out of our shacks."

The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), a mainly white party, last year named Mmusi Maimane, a black man, as its leader. Seeking to widen its appeal in the "rainbow nation", it has been courting ANC supporters before the vote.

The leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is led by firebrand Julius Malema, Zuma's one-time protege and former ANC youth leader. It is seen attracting the young and unemployed with a promise to redistribute among poor blacks wealth still largely held by whites.

An opinion poll by Ipsos released last week shows the ANC is expected to garner 47 percent of the vote against 43 percent by the DA in Tshwane municipality, which includes Pretoria.

In Johannesburg, the ANC has a 46 percent lead to the DA's 41 percent, while in Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA is ahead with 44 percent to ANC's 37 percent.

"Major metropolitan areas that investors know well are in close contention," London-based Nomura emerging markets analyst Peter Attard Montalto said in a note. "Overall, we think one or possibly two metros could fall from ANC majority control."

Related Articles
  • KPMG's South Africa bosses purged over Gupta scandal

    2017/09/17 World auditor KPMG cleared out its South African leadership en masse on Friday next damning findings from an internal investigation into work done for businessmen friends of President Jacob Zuma. KPMG's investigation into its work for the Guptas, accused by a public watchdog of improperly influencing government contracts, identified no evidence of crimes or corruption, but found that work done for Gupta family firms "fell considerably short of KPMG's standards", the auditor said in a statement.
  • Zimbabwe Election Commission keen to avoid Kenyan situation

    2017/09/10 Zimbabwe’s election commission says it is keen to avoid a repeat scenario of what happened in Kenya where the presidential polls were nullified last week. Speaking through its chairperson Justice Rita Makarau, the election body said it will conduct next year’s elections in accordance with the country’s electoral laws.
  • Kenya, Nigeria & S. Africa: biggest winners of Google's Africa tech training

    2017/09/09 Alphabet Inc’s Google aims to train 10 million people in Africa in online skills over the next five years in an effort to make them additional employable, its chief executive said on Thursday. The U.S. technology giant as well hopes to train 100,000 software developers in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, a company spokeswoman said. Google’s pledge marked an expansion of an initiative it launched in April 2016 to train young Africans in digital skills. It announced in March it had reached its initial target of training one million people.
  • Submarine cable deployed in Angola to link Africa to South America

    2017/09/09 The project of deploying the initial submarine telecommunication cable in the South Atlantic ocean linking Africa to South America has been launched in Angola’s capital Luanda. The launch of the fibre-optic South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) follows months of marine survey that was completed by multinational telecommunications company Angola Cables in April.
  • UNWTO: International tourism – strongest half-year results since 2010

    2017/09/09 Destinations worldwide welcomed 598 million international tourists in the initial six months of 2017, some 36 million additional than in the same period of 2016. At 6%, increase was well above the trend of recent years, making the current January-June period the strongest half-year since 2010. Visitor numbers reported by destinations around the world reflect strong request for international travel in the initial half of 2017, according to the new UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. Worldwide, international tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) increased by 6% compared to the same six-month period last year, well above the sustained and consistent trend of 4% or higher increase since 2010. This represents the strongest half-year in seven years.