South Africa: Ramaphosa launches first campaign rally for 2024 elections

The leader of the ruling ANC launched the first campaign rally for the 2024 elections, Sunday (Sep. 03). He touched on topics including the economy and admitted mistakes.

The needs of South Africans are better met today than they were at the end of the apartheid era, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at the ruling ANC's first campaign rally.

The African National Congress held it's 2019 Election Manifesto review at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto on September 3rd, where President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed a crowd of some xx.

The review is a report back on the progress it has made in implementing the party's policy from the last general elections as the party campaigns for the 2024 general election. 

"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 called on voters, who will thus decide whether he gets a second term as leader, not to focus on the negative aspects of his record but to look at the progress made in thirty years.

He listed some of the problems the country has faced recently, including the Covid pandemic which led to the loss of 100,000 lives and two million jobs, as well as riots in 2021 in which more than 350 people were killed, floods and finally the economic consequences of the conflict in Ukraine.

He promised to rid the Johannesburg region of illegal miners who are often the source, or trigger, for violence, but also to take a tough stance on undocumented foreigners, a recurring theme in recent weeks.

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

Next year, against the backdrop of a struggling economy and a cost of living crisis, South Africans will elect members of parliament. The majority party will then designate the president. 

The ANC is the party of the late Nelson Mandela and when the 2024 elections come around, it will have been in government for 30 years since the end of apartheid. The party led the anti-apartheid movement and came to power in South Africa’s first all-race election in 1994, when Mandela was elected president.

But its support has slowly waned over the years amid criticism that it has failed to provide basic services and ease poverty for millions of the country’s Black majority. Widespread corruption in state-owned institutions and local and national government has further eroded its popularity.

Ramaphosa on Saturday (Sep. 02) said the party would not enter into any coalitions after the 2024 general elections, saying he is confident that the party will achieve an outright majority as many South Africans still see the party as its only hope for a better country.

Seven opposition parties in South Africa reached an agreement last August to form a coalition to unseat the ruling African National Congress if it fails to gain an outright majority in next year’s general election.

In the 2019 election, the ANC won 57.5% of the vote but its share dipped below half in local elections two years ago, seen as a momentous moment in South African politics. It still won around 24% more of the popular vote than its nearest challenger in that vote.