Ramaphosa expresses confidence in winning 2024 elections

South Africa’s ruling ANC will win an outright majority in 2024 elections and not need to govern in a coalition, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Saturday, despite struggling in opinion polls.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa urges the public to stand against police killings

RAMAPHOSA

“The ANC is going to achieve an outright majority… We are confident we are going to emerge victorious,” said the president of the African National Congress (ANC).

ALSO READ: End of the Rand? New BRICS currency on the agenda

Since the end of apartheid in 1994 the ANC, which fought white-minority rule, has picked the head of state in South Africa.

Next year South Africans will elect MPs, and at the end of the vote, it is the majority party which designates the president.

Asked about the type of parties with which the ANC could ally itself to stay in power, the president smiled.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa highlights progress in SA’s post-apartheid era

“We are not working to be in a coalition,” he replied, on the eve of a meeting planned in a stadium in Soweto, an iconic township on the southern fringes of Johannesburg, to launch his campaign.

“The majority of people who have always voted for the ANC still see the ANC as the only vehicle for the transformation process in the country, to consolidate it and make it better.

“Many people don’t see anyone doing better.”

ANC

The ANC will be supported on the ground by the largest trade union federation in the country, the powerful Cosatu, and the Communist Party (SACP), he added.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa calls on police to demonstrate they can protect SA

During the last campaign in 2019, the ANC prioritised economic and social transformation, the fight against corruption, crime, and the progress made since apartheid.

“We have a vastly different country,” he said, but added that “the shadow of apartheid has continued to cast a shadow on everything we have sought to do”.

Under apartheid, 36 percent of South Africans had access to electricity and now this figure was close to 93 percent, he said.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa is adamant that ANC will win elections next year

“It is a great achievement but there it still a lot to do,” he said.

The President also acknowledged many voters are “bitterly critical of (the) ANC”.

“Renewal is not a one day event,” he said.

ger/blb/gw/ach