A bell rang on the television, indicating a change in the results recorded so far. From their home north of Johannesburg, the Mathivha family celebrated the latest update: with most votes counted, the ANC had won just 41 percent.
“Good!” Buhle Mathivha said, pointing at the TV screen.
“Good,” repeated her husband, Khathu Mathivha.
“It should continue to decline, they are too arrogant,” Mathivha said.
The couple sat in front of a cozy fire on Friday night in South Africa, where it’s almost winter, watching news coverage of what was going to be a decisive election. For the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, the party once led by Nelson Mandela failed to win an absolute majority of votes in a national election.
While the African National Congress (ANC) remains the leading party in the May 29 election, the latest count is widely seen as a political defeat and a rebuke to voters like the Mathivhas, who have become exasperated with the only party they They have known since the elections. end of apartheid. In the last election, in 2019, the ANC won 57 percent of the vote. The drop to 41 percent in these elections has cost the party its majority in Parliament, which elects the country’s president. He will now have to work with smaller opposition parties, such as those Mathiv voted for instead of the ANC.
Buhle and Khathu Mathivha broke with family conventions and their own previous votes when they decided not to vote for the ANC, a party they described as “pompous” and corrupt. Ms. Mathivha, 34, and Mr. Mathivha, 36, are part of the largest cohort of registered voters in South Africa. South Africans aged 30 to 39 make up almost a quarter of registered voters, and slightly older people aged 40 to 49 make up more than a fifth.
Voting-age South Africans born after apartheid, in 1994, have some of the lowest registration numbers, while those who bore the worst of the apartheid regime are aging. Instead, a generation that experienced the euphoria and economic growth of post-apartheid South Africa, and then the decline and discouragement that followed, has soured on the ANC.
“Maybe they had a plan to fight apartheid, but not a plan for the economy,” Mathivha said.
The couple live in Gauteng province, the most populous and wealthiest region, where urban black voters are increasingly resentful of the ANC government’s failure to provide even the most basic services. The Mathivhas, who work in banking and technology, live on a tree-lined street in what was once a whites-only suburb of Johannesburg.
In the last election, it was Mr Mathivha’s mother, a doctor, who convinced them to give the ANC another chance. As a black South African who came of age during apartheid, Mr. Mathivha’s mother was only allowed to attend two medical schools. Now his son and his wife could choose the best South Africa had to offer. The couple voted for the ANC in 2019, but now, as Buhle and Khathu Mathivha consider the future of their 3-year-old son, they said they could not support the ANC.
Ms Mathivha’s father worked as a security guard but made sure his daughter attended a well-resourced, formerly white public school in Cape Town. Mr Mathivha’s family moved from Soweto to the prosperous north, where he attended similar schools. Today, they are budgeting for private school for his son, having lost faith in public schools. It will be an additional expense at a time of skyrocketing inflation and rolling power outages.
Power outages have not only made life more expensive, but also more dangerous. At night, their street is completely dark and empty, because the streetlights haven’t worked in months. Their house is conveniently close to malls and stores, except that the shopping district has become a no-go zone due to crime. In 2020, thieves broke into the Mathivhas’ home and cleaned it out. When they voted last week, public safety was paramount.
“Crime is something very important to us,” Mathivha said.
They chose the Patriotic Alliance, a party founded about a decade ago by an ex-convict turned businessman who promised to get tough on crime. Gayton McKenzie, leader of the party, has called for the return of the death penalty for serious crimes.
Ms Mathivha was also impressed with Mr McKenzie’s year as mayor of a rural district in South Africa’s Western Cape province. She noted his efforts to bring jobs to the city, improve infrastructure and, above all, that he did not take a salary. This impressed Ms Mathivha, who used to drive through the area when she was a child and remembers the abject poverty she saw.
Watching this week’s election results, she was dismayed that the impoverished province where her parents grew up, the Eastern Cape, still chose to vote ANC.
“I think they fear racism and apartheid more than poverty,” he said.
In a down-ballot race, Mathivha voted for a party led by a white man, which is also the second largest party, the Democratic Alliance.
“If the ANC had sorted out infrastructure, policing, education and the fundamentals, I probably would have voted for them,” he said.
Despite the couple’s optimism about the outcome, they are concerned about the instability of the coalition governments. Julius Malema’s statements that his party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, would demand a role in the Ministry of Finance as a condition for cooperation, scared them. The party has advocated the nationalization of the country’s central bank.
“It’s so we can control the money,” Mathivha said.
“What positive could come out of that?” his wife asked.
“Nothing,” exclaimed her husband.
“Thank God you are in fourth place,” he said of Malema’s party.
Still, Malema’s party has made gains among the black middle class in urban centers. But not as much as the newcomer, the uMkhonto we Sizwe, or MK party, led by former ANC president Jacob Zuma. Ms. Mathivha’s eyes widened as she watched the surge that made it the third largest party. Still, like other ANC separatist parties, she expected the MK party to fade into obscurity.
“More than anything,” he said, “the ANC has felt humiliated.”