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A new political movement has been launched in South Africa to capitalise on voters’ discontent with the stagnant economy and rolling blackouts that have engulfed the country under the African National Congress.
Rise Mzansi, led by a former newspaper editor and bank executive, said it would contest elections next year when the ANC’s share of the vote could fall below 50 per cent for first time since it won the first post-apartheid vote in 1994.
Several new parties have emerged in Africa’s most industrial nation in the run-up to next year’s vote, as larger and more established opposition groups have struggled to expand support even as ANC backing has collapsed to as little as 40 per cent in some surveys.
At a press conference on Wednesday, the new party’s leader, Songezo Zibi, a former executive at Absa, a South African bank, said: “2024 is our 1994.”
Nearly 30 years into the post-apartheid democracy, the growing fragmentation of politics in the wake of the ANC’s problems reflects disaffection with established politicians over ingrained issues such as rising crime, rampant corruption and severe blackouts known as load-shedding.
“The rise of these new political parties seems to reflect a general sense of discontentment with the traditional parties,” Khaya Sithole, an independent analyst, said.
In response to this political fracturing, the main opposition Democratic Alliance proposed a “moonshot pact” this month for the rising number of anti-ANC parties to work together to unseat the once-dominant liberation movement.
“Let us cast aside our petty differences and stand together as one pact, united in our diversity, and work towards our shared goal of unseating the ANC,” John Steenhuisen, the DA’s leader, said this week.
At the same time the DA has ruled out working with the third-largest party, the radical-leftist Economic Freedom Fighters, who are seen as the likeliest coalition partner for the ANC if its support does fall under 50 per cent next year.
The ANC won around 57 per cent of the vote in 2019 general elections after Ramaphosa revived the party’s fortunes by replacing Jacob Zuma, who had presided over years of misrule and corruption.
Named after an alternative term for South Africa, Rise Mzansi is seeking alliances with civil society groups to galvanise voters on a centrist platform.
“South Africa needs a reset . . . Rise Mzansi’s vision is to build an equal, safe, united and prosperous South Africa in one generation,” Zibi said at the launch event at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, home of the country’s highest court and an old apartheid prison.
The party is backed by professionals and civic activists in a sign of the politicisation of the middle class in the face of collapsing infrastructure, such as record power cuts being imposed by the broken Eskom electricity monopoly, and unhappiness with the opposition.
“It’s not load-shedding that demoralises us, it’s the sense that we’ve lost the ability to deal with it,” Zibi said. “Millions of [ANC] supporters deserve a better political home, one that takes their valid dreams seriously instead of using them as fodder for personal enrichment and power.”
He signalled that Rise Mzansi’s policies would include reviving foreign investment in the mining sector, which has lagged in recent years, and ending a perceived authoritarian drift in foreign relations. The ANC has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We export far less than we should because we have killed mining investment,” he said. “Our foreign policy has gone from non-aligned to complete misalignment with our constitutional values.”
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