South Africa’s Elections Offer One More Chance to Turn the Country Around

When South Africans go to the polls on May 8 it will be the most important election since the black majority shook off the shackles of apartheid in 1994 and installed Nelson Mandela as the nation’s first black president. That election ended a half-century of brutal segregation and ushered in an era that promised equal opportunities for all. The African National Congress was brought into democratic power by a global icon who’d paid for his belief in a free South Africa with almost three decades in jail. It was a time of hope and reconciliation.

The ANC has ruled the country for 25 years now. What’s at stake this time is just as important: rescuing what little is left of the gains South Africans have made since the end of apartheid. The nine-year rule of Jacob Zuma, which ended with his resignation last year, saw the willful dismantling of the country’s once-respected legal and regulatory institutions and the deterioration of a host of state companies as ANC leadership became a byword for corruption.