- Will the one-party rule situation change in the next 14 hours?
- Voter turnout will be crucial. News24 examines the strategies of the three major parties – the ANC, DA and EFF.
- A vigorous campaign, mild weather and the possibility of change all point to South Africans turning out in large numbers to vote.
- Find out everything you need to know about the 2024 General Election in News24's elections hub.
Wednesday's election will be historic.
This feels like a memorable moment, and South African voters will get to decide in the coming hours exactly how significant it will be.
Rolling Coverage | More than 900,000 special ballots have already been cast, and millions more are expected to be cast at polling stations on Wednesday.
The 2024 elections will be in many ways a first, despite being the seventh democratic election to be held in the 30th anniversary of the fall of apartheid and the emergence of constitutional democracy.
Importantly, this is the first time the ruling ANC is at risk of losing its majority – not just because opinion polls suggest so, but because its electoral lead has been steadily declining since 2009, hitting a low of 57.5% in 2019 and falling below 50% for the first time in the 2021 municipal elections.
Unemployment, a struggling economy, corruption, incompetence, crumbling infrastructure, and power and water cuts have all contributed to eroding trust in the ANC.
This is also the first election in which independent candidates will contest for parliamentary seats.
This is the first election in which voters will be forced to vote only at the polling station where they are registered.
It will be the first time that an ANC splinter party will be led by a former party leader or former head of state.
The performance of former President Jacob Zuma's Mkhonto weSizwe (MK) party in the inaugural elections will be closely watched. The party is expected to perform reasonably well in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng. However, its main role in the run-up to the elections so far has been a rapid and dangerous attempt to sow doubts about the fairness of the Electoral Commission of South Africa's (IEC) administration of the elections.
Speaking at a press conference late on Tuesday, IEC chief electoral officer Si Mamabolo warned that this was a significant risk and challenge for the commission.
2024 is also the year in which a record number of young people have registered to vote. A record number of political parties have run candidates, and in the past two days a record number of special votes have been cast by seniors and people who were unable to get to the polls.
Polling stations are scheduled to open at 7am and close at 9pm. What happens in these 14 hours will determine the fate of the country for the next five years.
This has been an uphill battle for many political parties fighting the election.
A key feature that differs from the 2021 elections, at least for the ANC, is the lack of a consistent power outage over a period of 62 days.
Rolling blackouts have devastated support for the ANC in the past two elections, especially in key provinces such as Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. Eskom's success in keeping electricity running for more than two months is an advantage for the incumbent government.
Political parties, mainly the three major parties, will be focusing their efforts during this 14-hour period on ensuring that their supporters turn out to polling stations and vote.
The ANC, DA and EFF have the powerful organisations to achieve this.
Turnout, after all, is crucial: It will give the parties a sense of how they are performing long before results start to trickle in, help gauge the mood of voters and determine whether a long, hard campaign before the election has paid off.
“From the ANC's perspective, our biggest enemy in this election is our inability to mobilise our base and get them to turn out to vote on election day,” ANC electoral chief Mdumiseni Ntuli said during a webinar with party veterans this week.
“In past elections, the ANC has struggled to mobilise its support base to turn out to vote on election day.”
This time, the party is not taking any chances. Ntuli has implemented a new strategy to ensure ANC voters turn out to the polls. Each polling district is assigned a minimum of 20 volunteers. Each volunteer is assigned between 50 and 100 registered voters.
Volunteers have to check their lists against the voter roll to ensure that all of their assigned voters turn up to vote. Volunteers then knock on the doors of these voters (who are known to be ANC supporters) to ensure they vote.
“This election will be won not only on our ability to coordinate this work, but on our ability to be accountable. [by volunteers]”A central operations centre has been set up to coordinate this, provide necessary assistance and step in when local organisations and volunteers are unable to respond,” he said.
The ANC is in a unique position, benefiting from both low and high voter turnout.
A moderate turnout, like that in 2019, generally means disaster for the ANC.
A low turnout means that the opposition failed to motivate their supporters to vote, whereas a high turnout means that the ANC successfully galvanised its supporters to turn out to the polls.This time, a tough 40-day “battle plan” was adopted by the ANC's highest decision-making body, the National Executive Committee, to ensure that supporters turned out to vote on election day.
Part of the plan was to appoint a former party leader, something the ANC has not done since winning a two-thirds majority in the 2004 election. The rest of the campaign was intensive door-to-door canvassing.
This time, 11 million voters are eligible to vote, and the difference with previous elections is that each voter will be assigned a volunteer who will have to make sure they turn up to vote.
Only the DA can rival the ANC in terms of national influence and reach. Only the ANC and the DA have party organisations that crisscross the country.
DA deputy election director Ashok Sarpen said a high voter turnout was an advantage, with a moderate to high turnout being optimal for the opposition.
“When voter turnout is low, smaller parties perform well, which is not an ideal situation for us,” he said.
The DA must know exactly who their voters are, and this is determined between elections and during the election campaign.
On election day, these voters will be reached out to ensure they turn up to vote. The DA will use its wide volunteer base to provide transport for voters in need. In the past, the ANC and EFF have used buses to transport large numbers of voters to polling stations, but changes to the law mean that this will no longer be possible, requiring voters to only vote where they are registered.
The EFF is also calling on volunteers and existing voters to bring 20 people to vote for the party. Party leader Julius Malema said at the party's final election rally on Sunday that volunteers must ensure that EFF supporters travel to their respective polling stations.
“We have not won the elections, we are starting now…Warriors, leaders who lie that they have party operatives, leaders who lie that they have party operatives, leaders who lie that they have transports are worse than spies and operatives,” he said.
He urged all party volunteers to be honest about their capabilities to ensure voters turn up to polling stations so that the national leadership can “step in” if necessary.The EFF has an election nerve centre and has call centre agents to ensure that volunteers and party representatives are available if they encounter any issues.
Smaller parties are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to mobilizing voter support due to lack of capacity and resources, which was also reflected in the electoral results, where only a handful of parties won seats in the 2019 elections, despite over 60 parties competing.
Despite being well into winter, mild and sunny weather is expected across most of the country on Wednesday, which Mamabolo said at a press conference late on Tuesday would increase the likelihood of a strong voter turnout.
Another key factor, according to the DA's Salpen, is whether people believe voting will make a difference.
“We believe that in this election, opposition voters are very motivated because of the ANC's poor performance in 2021,” he said. Opinion polls also have some influence on this perception. Many polls have shown a decline in support for the ruling party, with some predicting a drop of nearly 20 percentage points, but this seems unlikely given trends in past elections and by-elections.
The ANC criticised the poll as “desperation”.
“The desperation to unseat the ANC has reached such a fever pitch that once the ANC has declared victory, opinion polls are used to mislead voters and cast doubt on the actual outcome. These flawed and low-quality polls have the potential to incite violence and destabilise the country,” said ANC communications chairperson Nkenke Kekana.
The real polls will be held on Wednesday and the results, whatever they may be, will be a testament to the strength and resilience of South Africa's democracy.
