The leader of Inkatha Freedom Party, Velenkosi Hlabisa, waves to the crowd during an election rally in Richards Bay, near Durban, South Africa, Sunday, May 26, 2024, in anticipation of the 2024 general elections scheduled for May 29. 

 South Africa's main opposition party Democratic Alliance on Sunday made its final appeal to South Africans to help it unseat the ruling African National Congress as it concluded its campaign ahead of elections this week.

The Democratic Alliance is the biggest opposition party in South Africa and has gathered some smaller opposition parties to form a pact known as the Multi-Party Charter for South Africa, which will see a group of political parties combine their votes to challenge the ruling ANC after the elections.

Sunday's rally coincided with that of the smaller opposition Inkatha Freedom Party, which has the populous KwaZulu Natal province as its stronghold and has committed to work with the main opposition.

Recent polls and analysts have suggested the ANC could receive less than 50% of the national vote. The Democratic Alliance is under pressure after its support declined in the last national elections and a number of its former leaders left the party to form new political parties that will be competing in the polls.

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Its leaders and supporters came out in the thousands Sunday in Benoni, east of Johannesburg, where its blue colored flags and party memorabilia decorated a small stadium in the town.

“Make no mistake, if DA voters stay at home, or they split the vote among many small parties on the ballot, then our country's next chapter could be even uglier than the past,” said party leader John Steenhuisen.

“If we sit back and allow a coalition between the ANC, the (Economic Freedom Fighters) and the (uMkhonto weSizwe), aided by the sell-outs in the Patriotic Alliance, then our tomorrow will be far, far worse than yesterday. It will be doomsday for South Africa,” he said to loud applause.

A coalition between the DA and other parties including the Patriotic Alliance in the Johannesburg council after the 2021 local government elections collapsed, handing power back to an ANC-led coalition and resulting in political animosity between the two parties.

Steenhuisen has repeatedly accused the ruling ANC and the leftist opposition party Economic Freedom Fighters of planning to go into coalition after the elections.

Speaking ahead of its final rally in the city of Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday, Inkatha Freedom Party leader Velenkosini Hlabisa said their main objective was to see the current government removed.

"The IFP is campaigning to remove the ANC from power and become part of the government at a policy making level and also cut the ANC to below 50% at national level.

“We are calling on people to take action and vote IFP to remove the government that has failed them,” said Hlabisa.

He said most negotiations would take place after the results were in. Hlabisa highlighted unemployment, poverty, crime and the country's electricity crisis as some of the major problems South Africans are facing.

“We all know the crisis we are facing, we all know the depth of the struggle in South Africa and the daily trauma so many people endure. What the country needs to hear is that there is a way out,” he said.

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South Africa's 4 big political parties begin final weekend of campaigning ahead of election

Supporters of Ukhonto weSizwe party sit as they wait for the start of an election meeting in Mpumalanga, near Durban, South Africa, Saturday, May 25, 2024, in anticipation of the 2024 general elections scheduled for May 29.

South Africa's four main political parties began the final weekend of campaigning Saturday before a possibly pivotal election that could bring the country's most important change in three decades.

Supporters of the African National Congress, which has been in the government ever since the end of white minority rule in 1994, gathered at a soccer stadium in Johannesburg to hear a speech by party leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The ANC is under unprecedented pressure to retain its parliamentary majority in Africa's most advanced country. Having seen its popularity steadily decline over the last two decades, Wednesday's election could be a landmark moment when the party once led by Nelson Mandela drops below 50% of the national vote for the first time, although it's still widely expected to win the largest share.

Several polls have the ANC's support at less than 50%, raising the possibility that it will have to form a national coalition. That would also be a first for South Africa's young democracy, which was only established 30 years ago with the first all-race vote that officially ended the apartheid system of racial segregation.

As thousands of supporters in the ANC's black, green and gold colors attended its last major rally before the election, Ramaphosa recognized some of the grievances of South Africans, which include high levels of poverty and unemployment that mainly affect the country's Black majority.

“We have a plan to get more South Africans to work," Ramaphosa said. “Throughout this campaign, in the homes of our people, in the workplaces, in the streets of our townships and villages, so many of our people told us of their struggles to find work and provide for their families.”

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The main opposition Democratic Alliance party had a rally in Cape Town, South Africa's second-biggest city and its stronghold. Party leader John Steenhuisen made a speech while supporters in the DA's blue colors held up blue umbrellas.

“Democrats, friends, are you ready for change?” Steenhuisen said. The crowd shouted back “Yes!”

Even though the ANC's support has shrunk in three successive national elections and appears set to continue dropping, no party has emerged to overtake it — or even challenge it.

But losing its majority would be the clearest rejection yet of the famous party that was at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement and is credited with leading South Africans to freedom.

Some ANC supporters also expressed their frustration, as the country of 62 million people battles poverty, desperately high unemployment, some of the worst levels of inequality in the world, and other problems with corruption, violent crime and the failure of basic government services in some places.

“We want to see job opportunities coming and basically general change in every aspect,” ANC supporter Ntombizonke Biyela said. “Since 1994 we have been waiting for ANC, it has been long. We have been voting and voting but we see very little progress as the people, only a special few seem to benefit.”

While conceding to some failures, the ANC has pointed out that South Africa is a far better place than it was during apartheid, when a set of race-based laws oppressed the country's Black majority in favor of a small white minority. The ANC was also widely credited with success in expanding services to millions of poor South Africans in the decade after apartheid, even if critics say it has lost its way recently.

"There are many problems in South Africa, but nobody can deny the changes that have happened since 1994, and that was because of the ANC,” said 42-year-old Eric Phoolo, another supporter of the ruling party.

As some voters have turned away from the ANC, it has led to a slow fracturing of South African politics, rather than a single opposition party rising. Disaffected South Africans have gone to an array of different opposition parties, some of them new. Dozens of parties are registered to contest next week's election.

South Africans vote for parties and not directly for their president in national elections. Parties then get seats in Parliament according to their share of the vote and the lawmakers elect the president — which is why the ANC losing its majority would affect the 71-year-old Ramaphosa's hopes of being reelected smoothly for a second and final five-year term.

If the ANC goes below 50%, it would likely need an agreement with other parties to have the votes in Parliament to reelect Ramaphosa, once a protege of Mandela.

The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters had their last big preelection gathering in the northern city of Polokwane, the hometown of fiery leader Julius Malema. “The people of South Africa must decide if they want unemployment," Malema said.

The new MK Party of former South African President and former ANC leader Jacob Zuma was also campaigning in a township just outside the east coast city of Durban, although Zuma didn't attend the event. The 82-year-old Zuma rocked South African politics when he announced late last year he was turning his back on the ANC and joining MK, while fiercely criticizing the ANC under Ramaphosa.

Zuma has been disqualified from standing as a candidate for Parliament in the election because of a previous criminal conviction, but MK is still allowed to use his image as its leader and he continues to campaign. His daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, attended the rally, where MK followers chanted: “Run, Ramaphosa, run."

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ANC stage rally ahead of South African election

The African National Congress (ANC) staged an election rally in Johannesburg on Saturday as the focus of next week's South African election turned to the fate of the ANC party and whether it was going to lose its parliamentary majority for the first time, as many expect.

South African opposition targets ANC majority as vote looms

South Africa's opposition parties mounted an 11th-hour assault Sunday on the ruling ANC's 30-year-old grip on power, staging large-scale rallies three days before what promises to be a historic general election.

From the right, the Democratic Alliance (DA) gathered in the town of Benoni outside Johannesburg to cheer on leader John Steenhuisen under a pair of national flags ahead of Wednesday's vote.

The party picked a smaller 20,000-seat stadium than the African National Congress had chosen for its huge Johannesburg rally the day before, but blue-clad supporters amply filled it, kept on their feet by DJs and bands playing amapiano and country songs.

"We don't offer empty promises, we show concrete facts and the facts are undeniable," Steenhuisen told the crowd, shielded from the winter sun by blue umbrellas.

"Today our people are suffering under the unbearable burden of poverty, unemployment, crime. These disasters are not inevitable but were created by the ANC," he said.

"On Wednesday, the ANC will lose the outright majority it has abused for decades... On Wednesday, we close the ANC chapter of our history."

Opinion polls suggest the white-led DA will not overtake the ANC to become South Africa's biggest single party, but it hopes to unite with a coalition of smaller outfits to take power.

"I want change. It's too bad right now: no jobs, no nothing," said 66-year-old job-seeker Isaac Tembo, who has voted for the ANC every five years since the advent of democracy in 1994.

From the left, former president Jacob Zuma, not legally a candidate because of a conviction for contempt of court, is marshalling his uMkonto weSizwe (MK) party for a final push.

Zuma, who served as the ANC's fourth president between 2009 and 2018 but left office dogged by graft allegations, cannot stand for election but may still take votes from his former party.

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- Rescue mission? -

He addressed a final weekend rally in one of the ANC's rural strongholds, in Emalahleni in the eastern province of Mpumalanga.

"There are many parties out there that will be voting with us because it is us, the black nation, that has been struggling," Zuma said.

"It is D-day. We are going to win it by two-thirds majority and become a country that is better than it is now."

President Cyril Ramaphosa is the fifth and latest in an unbroken line of African National Congress presidents dating back to Nelson Mandela's post-apartheid victory in 1994.

The ANC retains support among black South Africans grateful for the country's democracy and support for the welfare state and economic empowerment programmes.

But a younger generation, both black and white, which has grown up since the fall of apartheid is troubled by South Africa's power cuts, high crime rate and soaring joblessness.

Polls suggest the ANC could win fewer than 201 seats in the 400-member National Assembly for the first time and be unable to elect a president without support from other parties.

The DA, whose 48-year-old leader Steenhuisen is white, is hoping to capitalise on the discontent with a promise to "Rescue South Africa" through liberal economic reform and privatisations.

The ANC has played on fears that the DA would reverse 30 years of progress on economic and political equality and return power to a wealthy white elite.

But in Benoni, black DA supporters dismissed this fear.

"The DA will do better than ANC who lies," said 42-year-old mother-of-three Maria Choene.

The DA had bussed her more than 900 kilometres (560 miles) from her Aston Bay home with her eight-year-old daughter for the rally.

"I don't know why most of us are afraid of the DA. We should give them a chance first and vote them out if they fail, like the ANC," she argued.

The opposition is represented by 51 parties large and small on the ballot, and the DA leader would also face a post-election battle to assemble a coalition of MPs to put him in power.

"To drive this economy, the people need a stable government with economic policies that will grow the private sector," said Graham Gersback, 68, a local DA ward councillor at the rally.

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- Crime and power cuts -

The ANC sliding under 50 percent would put the party and South Africa in uncharted waters, but analysts and opinion polls agree this is the most likely outcome.

The ANC won freedom for black South Africans after decades of apartheid, helped build democracy and lifted millions out of poverty by creating a social welfare system.

But many in the country of 62 million are fed up with high and growing unemployment, currently at 32.9 percent, as well as rampant crime, power cuts and water shortages.

The economy grew a meagre 0.6 percent in 2023.

About 27 million people are registered to vote on May 29. They will elect the 400 members of the National Assembly, which then chooses the president.

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