South Africa elections: bishops urge voter participation

(Vatican Radio) South Africans went to the polls for general elections Wednesday. Many voters had already begun queuing before polling stations opened at 7 AM South Africa Time for the fifth election in the country since the end of Apartheid in 1994.

More than 20 thousand polling stations were operating at schools, houses of worship, hospitals, and seats of tribal authority. There were also several dozen mobile voting stations heading to remote areas. Roughly 25 million South Africans, or half the population, have registered to vote in the parliamentary elections that will also determine who shall be the country’s next president.

The African National Congress, which led the fight against apartheid, has dominated the country’s political scene since Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994. Since then, millions of people have gained access to water and other basic services, though protests often occur in areas where residents say the government has not been responsive to their needs.

The incumbent, President Jacob Zuma, has been involved recently in a scandal surrounding more than $20 million in state spending on his private home, though he denies any wrongdoing and has promised to work against graft.

In the last election in 2009, the ANC narrowly missed achieving a two-thirds majority, which would have allowed for constitutional changes. In this election cycle, the ANC’s main rivals are the centrist Democratic Alliance, headed by former journalist and anti-apartheid activist Helen Zille, and the Economic Freedom Fighters, headed led by the former head of the ANC’s youth league, Julius Malema.

The bishops of South Africa South Africa, made available a guide for voters ahead of the elections, in which there was a call to family, commitment and participation. “We believe people have a right and a duty to participate in society,” they wrote, “seeking together the common good and well-being of all, especially the poor and vulnerable.” This was a concern echoed by the editor of South Africa’s largest Catholic weekly newspaper, The Southern Cross, Gunther Simmermacher, who told Vatican Radio, “The big question in South Africa is going to remain poverty and unemployment.” Simmermacher went on to say, “That is going to be the great issue – and it is where the sources of [political] conflict are going to come from in the next few years.” Listen to Chris Altieri’s extended conversation with Gunther Simmermacher of South Africa’s Catholic weekly, The Southern Cross: