#Elections2019: These are the key issues for South Africans

A man attempts to rebuild his shack on illegally occupied land after clashes between police and residents in Somerset West near Cape Town. File picture: Mike Hutchings/Reuters

A man attempts to rebuild his shack on illegally occupied land after clashes between police and residents in Somerset West near Cape Town. File picture: Mike Hutchings/Reuters

Published May 6, 2019

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Johannesburg - South Africa is due to hold

parliamentary and provincial elections on Wednesday, amid

frustration with a lack of progress 25 years after the ANC swept to power at the

end of apartheid.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, who took over from

scandal-plagued Jacob Zuma as ANC leader in December 2017, is

trying to restore faith in the governing party after a torrid

decade under Zuma during which its image suffered.

The ANC has won every parliamentary election since 1994 but

saw its share of the vote fall from a high of more than 69

percent in 2004 to 62 percent in 2014, as economic growth

faltered and corruption scandals multiplied.

It is expected to secure another parliamentary majority this

week, but analysts predict that majority could fall, despite

Ramaphosa's efforts to clean up the party's image.

Here are some of the key issues at the elections.

LAND

Land is a highly emotive issue in South Africa, where the

bulk of productive agricultural land has remained in white hands

since the end of apartheid in 1994. A farm industry group and

government argue over exactly how much land is in black hands.

That land was forcibly taken from black people during the

colonial and apartheid eras.

Despite ploughing money into state-backed land transfer

initiatives, the ANC government failed to meet its target of

transferring 30 percent of commercial farmland to black hands by

2014, which fuelled unrest by communities living in squalid

shanty towns demanding better housing and services.

Under pressure from the EFF and more radical elements in the ANC, Ramaphosa last

year launched a process to change the constitution to make

explicit provision for land expropriation without compensation.

Ramaphosa has moved to allay investor fears that any

constitutional changes will result in Zimbabwe-style land grabs

or hurt food output. But Ramaphosa, if he is returned to power,

would need to strike a balance between policies that help quell

simmering discontent among the black majority without derailing

a struggling economy.

CORRUPTION

Years of corruption scandals implicating senior party

officials and government ministers have sullied the ANC's

reputation and could prove costly on May 8 as opposition parties

target malfeasance as a key pillar of their election campaigns.

A state corruption inquiry has heard evidence that

associates of former president Zuma siphoned off huge sums from

state tenders. Zuma has consistently denied wrongdoing.

But the rot is not confined to the upper echelons of power,

having seeped through to provincial and municipal authorities.

UNEMPLOYMENT

The country has some of the worst unemployment levels among

major emerging market economies, trapping millions of people in

poverty and spurring violent protests.

Around 27 percent of South Africans were unemployed in the

fourth quarter last year, according to a narrow definition of

unemployment. Among young black people the jobless rate

is one in two.

The three main political parties have all put job creation

at the heart of their campaigns.

Ramaphosa called a jobs summit last year, where he vowed to

create 275 000 more jobs a year.

That is an ambitious target. A number of companies in the

mining sector alone, which is one of the biggest employers in

the economy, have announced thousands of job cuts in the past

year. State firms and government departments also plan to reduce

their headcount, mainly through severance packages and hiring

freezes.

Election posters are seen on an illegally built shack as pressure mounts for housing in Cape Town. Picture: Mike Hutchings/Reuters

WEAK GROWTH

Economic growth has slowed sharply in recent

years, stretching public finances and sparking fierce

disagreements over the direction of economic policy.

In the decade before the global financial crisis, gross

domestic product (GDP) growth averaged around 4 percent.

But in the past decade it slowed to below 2 percent, which

is insufficient to make a meaningful dent in poverty and is

among the lowest among emerging markets.

Policy uncertainty during Zuma's tenure and a worsening

fiscal picture led to credit rating downgrades to "junk" status

and deterred much-needed investment by foreign and local

companies.

POWER CRISIS

Trust in state electricity firm Eskom among ordinary South

Africans and investors is low as it struggles to keep the lights

on and grapples with a severe financial crisis.

The past year has seen regular bouts of "load-shedding," a

local term for scheduled power cuts, for the first time since

2015 as Eskom has faced recurring problems at its creaking fleet

of coal-fired power stations.

Eskom has high debt levels, with its R420 billion debt

mountain equal to more than 8 percent of the country's GDP.

Ramaphosa has made reforming Eskom a priority, overseeing

the appointment of a new board of directors, pledging

restructuring and promising a R23 billion a year bailout

over the next three years.

But energy experts say that isn't enough to make Eskom

financially sustainable in the long term. The highest levels of

government are discussing additional financial support measures

for Eskom. 

Reuters

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