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Young people sit in a park in Johannesburg yesterday in front of a billboard calling on the people of South Africa to vote for the ANC in the upcoming election and displaying a portrait of Jacob Zuma. Jacob Zuma yesterday announced that South Africa will hold a general election on May 7. — AFP

JOHANNESBURG. — President Jacob Zuma yesterday announced that South Africa will hold a general election on May 7, a vote which promises to be the sternest test yet for the ruling African National Congress. The election — South Africa’s fifth since apartheid ended in 1994 — will be the first in which “born free” citizens can cast their ballot. They could make up as much as one fifth of the electorate.

It will also be the first election since the death of Nelson Mandela, the nation’s founding father, first democratically elected president and the ANC’s talismanic leader.
“These are historic elections as they take place during the 20th anniversary of our freedom from apartheid bondage,” Zuma said, foreshadowing a campaign likely to lean heavily on the ANC’s past glories.

Zuma said the vote would “consolidate the democracy and freedom that we worked so hard to achieve, and for which esteemed South Africans such as former president Nelson Mandela sacrificed life’s comforts for.”

The ANC is the strong favourite to win a majority of the 400 seats in parliament and so to return Zuma, now 71, to the presidency.
It has won each of the last four elections by a landslide, winning more than 60 percent of the popular vote.

But the party’s reputation has been sullied by pervasive inequality, joblessness, cronyism, corruption and government incompetence.
And this time round the ANC faces a phalanx of opposition parties — from the centrist Democratic Alliance to the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters of Julius Malema — who have fastened on to widespread popular unease.

Struggling leadership
Zuma himself heads into the election with his own standing significantly reduced.
He has been beset by a litany of scandals, crowned by the revelation that US$20 million of taxpayers’ money was used to refurbish his rural homestead.
That sits uneasily in a country where one in three workers is unemployed and many millions struggle to get by.

“This will be the jobs election,” said Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille, who promises to implement policies that create six million new jobs, if elected.
“We will make this election a battle of ideas; even as our opponents cling to the outdated politics of racial mobilisation.”

Meanwhile, South Africa’s Presidency yesterday slammed opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille for leaking confidential state information.

“The Presidency takes serious exception to the leaking by Western Cape Premier Helen Zille of information that arose during a confidential consultation between President Jacob Zuma, Premiers and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) yesterday to discuss election preparations,” presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj said.
Maharaj was referring to a tweeted message by Zille that the election date would be announced yesterday.

Zuma hosted the meeting of the IEC and nine premiers on Thursday at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guest House in Pretoria, on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.
Zille, as Western Cape premier, sat at the meetings to discuss serious matters of state, Maharaj said.

“She should thus respect confidentiality and not abuse the privilege and trust accorded to her by virtue of her status,” he said.
Zille could not be reached for comment. — AFP/Xinhua.