On Sunday, September 3, the head of the governing ANC officially kicked off the first election-related rally. He talked about the economy and acknowledged his errors.
Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, stated during the ANC’s first campaign rally that the needs of South Africans are better served now than they were at the conclusion of the apartheid era.
On September 3, the African National Congress hosted a review of its 2019 election platform at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto, where President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke to a crowd of about xx.
As the party runs for office in the general election of 2024, the review serves as a status report on how the party has carried out its platform from the previous general elections.
“We want to be as transparent and open as possible about where we have made progress, but also about the mistakes,” he told the assembled crowd, launching a grassroots consultation process that will culminate in a policy programme for the next five years.
- New Targets for 2024
Ramaphosa urged voters, who will ultimately determine whether he serves as leader for a second term, to look past the shortcomings of his record and consider the advancements made over the course of thirty years.
In his list of recent issues, he mentioned the Covid epidemic, which cost the nation 100,000 lives and two million jobs, as well as the 2021 riots, which resulted in more than 350 fatalities, floods, and, last but not least, the economic repercussions of the crisis in Ukraine.
He pledged to take a harsh stance against undocumented foreigners, a recurring issue in recent weeks, as well as to get rid of the illegal miners in the Johannesburg area who frequently serve as the catalyst or source of violence.
The South African president stated that in recent years, but more broadly over the past 30 years, “we have been working to improve the lives of our fellow citizens”.
- Challenging Vote
South Africans will elect members of parliament the next year amid a faltering economy and a crisis in the cost of living. The president will thereafter be chosen by the winning party.
The late Nelson Mandela’s party, the ANC, will have been in power for 30 years following the end of apartheid when the 2024 elections roll around. In 1994, when Mandela was elected president of South Africa, the party that spearheaded the anti-apartheid campaign won the first election that was open to all races.
However, over time, it has come under fire for failing to offer essential services and reduce poverty for millions of the country’s majority-Black population. Further, widespread corruption in state-owned organisations and local, state, and federal governments has further eroded its popularity.
On Saturday (Sept. 2), Ramaphosa declared that the party would not join any coalitions following the general elections of 2024. He expressed confidence in the party’s ability to win an outright majority because many South Africans still consider it as their only hope for a better nation.
In South Africa, seven opposition parties came to an agreement in August to unite in a coalition to topple the ruling African National Congress if it does not win an absolute majority in the general election held the following year.
The ANC received 57.5% of the vote in the 2019 election, but two years prior, in municipal elections, it received less than 50%, which was viewed as a significant turning point in South African politics. Even yet, it received almost 24% more votes in the popular vote than its nearest challenger in that vote.
