South Africa’s young radicals are turning on Mandela They view the ANC as an elite project

In 2021, at the age of 24, Chad Louw became South Africa’s youngest ever mayor. Then a member of the governing African National Congress party (ANC), Louw was elected in Oudtshoorn, a town in the Klein Karoo region of the Western Cape. This is a sparse, dusty world of open expanses, straight highways and dramatic mountain ranges. In the early 20th century, it supplied a global fashion for ostrich feathers, a boom period that endowed Oudtshoorn with a crop of stately colonial mansions known locally as ostrich palaces. Today, these buildings give the town a quaint character that sits uneasily amid the signs of poverty and unemployment.

Louw’s stint as mayor was short-lived, thanks to the fractious nature of municipal coalitions, but he remains active in politics. The son of a domestic worker and a warehouse worker, he belongs to a group known as the “coloureds”, whose mixed descent includes the Cape’s indigenous Khoisan people, Dutch settlers and Malay slaves brought to South Africa during the early colonial period. They share the language of the white Afrikaners who governed the country during apartheid, but under that regime endured severe discrimination similar to black South Africans. In my experience, few Westerners even know of the coloured people’s existence — and yet, they constitute about 8% of the country’s population, and more than 40% in the Western Cape.

When Louw joined the ANC in 2017, years of corruption and mismanagement had already tainted its image as the party of Mandela which ushered in democracy in 1994. But he believed the ANC was still the best vehicle for change. “There is more to do after 1994,” he tells me. “I wanted to implement what we were promised — not just freedom, which we have now, but economic freedom.” According to Louw, assistance has been too slow in reaching poverty-stricken rural areas. His own community of Dysselsdorp has recently benefited from a new housing project — but that was the first in 27 years. In particular, Louw wanted to fight on behalf of coloured people, many of whom feel neglected by the ANC. He even speaks of a “reverse apartheid”.

But in February this year, Louw left the ANC. The party, he says, has “become so toxic I don’t think that dream of economic freedom will be realised”. He found that political opportunities were distributed according to internal factions and personal relationships, while there was little interest in representing coloured people. Louw has now joined a small party called the Patriotic Alliance, which was established in 2013 and has been winning seats at municipal elections since 2016. The Patriotic Alliance has a strong emphasis on the interests of coloured people, though it says its populist stances on issues such as crime and illegal immigration resonate with ordinary South Africans more broadly. Louw, for instance, favours introducing the death penalty to counter South Africa’s severe problems with violent crime (the country recorded 27,500 murders last year), citing the precedent of El Salvador.

Louw’s story is emblematic of the ANC’s declining fortunes among young South Africans. Ahead of the national elections on Wednesday, which could well see the party losing its absolute majority for the first time, a survey of 18-to-24-year-olds showed a disturbing degree of disillusionment. Only 16% expressed optimism about the country’s future, the lowest score of the 16 African nations surveyed. Almost three quarters said South Africa is heading in the wrong direction, citing a bevy of grievances including government corruption, unemployment, the presence of undocumented migrants and problems with basic services such as water.

I have found a similar picture of frustration in my own conversations with members of the “born free” generation — those born after 1994, who have lived their entire lives under ANC rule. The electoral implications of these sentiments are still unclear, for they have contributed to pitifully low levels of voter registration and political engagement more broadly. But speaking to those who are engaged, the vision of national unity and gradual transformation which Mandela’s party stood for 30 years ago is now wearing dangerously thin. Among South Africa’s many different groups, there are few who do not feel in some way unjustly treated, and young people increasingly favour movements which speak to those injustices.

In Louw’s case, that movement is the Patriotic Alliance. But in South Africa at large, the most effective practitioners of youth politics are undoubtedly the radical-Left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). This party emerged in 2013 from the ANC’s own youth league, under the leadership of charismatic firebrand Julius Malema. Visiting South Africa in April, I found Malema’s portrait with its trademark red beret staring out from long rows of election posters at the roadsides. His movement’s irreverent stance towards Mandela’s legacy can be gleaned from its manifesto claim that “We are not part of the 1994 elite pact. We are a completely new generation, with new demands.”

The EFF presents itself as the agent of an unfinished black liberation in a country where the white minority still controls a large proportion of the wealth. The “non-negotiable cardinal pillars” of its constitution include the expropriation and equal redistribution of land, nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, free education, healthcare and housing, and a move “from reconciliation to justice” across the entire African continent. The party registers around 10-15% in national polls, meaning that if the ANC fails to win a majority, it could become part of a governing coalition.

Hundreds of miles to the north east of Oudtshoorn, in the province of Mpumalanga, I heard about the issues shaping the politics of young South Africans. Unita Mdhluli works as a receptionist inside the Kruger National Park, a popular tourist destination, where she hopes to one day become a field guide. She is 24, and with her confident demeanour, she seems to be living proof of the opportunities available in post-apartheid South Africa. But Mdhluli credits her education largely to the private school she attended during her primary years. Her state-run secondary school, by contrast, was chaotic. She had to share textbooks, switch between classes taught in Xitsonga and exams set in English, and “spent most of my days fighting other pupils for something as simple as a chair to sit on in class”.

As a share of national income, South Africa spends more on education than the EU average, but experiences like Mdhluli’s remain common. “We grow up with the saying, ‘use what you have to your advantage’,” she tells me, but many find themselves with little to use. South African students struggle to achieve basic skills such as literacy, with around half of them failing to complete secondary education. Lacking academic or trade qualifications, “most of the youth try to start a business, and since they don’t even have the knowledge to do that, they end up selling alcohol without licence or selling drugs”. Youth unemployment stands at a staggering 45%. Another option is leaving South Africa altogether. But while some emigrants find success and become “the icon of the community”, Mdhluli says, others fall into criminality and “have ended up coming back home in a coffin”.

Against this backdrop, it is unsurprising that young black South Africans are attracted to a movement promising radical change. Explaining the popularity of the EFF among her friends, Mdhluli tells me “its agenda is based on improving the lives of the youth of South Africa”. But she also observes that political engagement is concentrated among students in higher education. This, it seems, is the paradox of the EFF. While presenting itself as an authentically African movement fighting for the oppressed masses, some of its most committed supporters, like those of radical movements in the Western world, are educated young people who feel deprived of social mobility

These people observe that in South Africa’s poorer communities, the young are submerged in immediate material concerns and fail to engage with broader questions of governance. Louw calls this straatpolitiek — street politics — and characterises it as: “I just want my electricity to work, I just want to fix my burst pipe.” Despite its poor record with infrastructure in recent years, this localised field of vision probably works to the advantage of the ANC, since it has established relatively generous welfare entitlements during its decades in office. Almost half of South Africa’s 60 million citizens receive state grants, and the ANC is now promising to extend a monthly benefit dating from the Covid pandemic in the form of a basic income system. Similarly, state procurement contracts loom large in the politics of local communities, as small businesses and mafias demand a share of government spending.

This presents a stark contrast with the broad horizons that students encounter at universities. Here one finds South Africa’s peculiar circumstances merging with global trends in theory, activism and identity politics. In 2015, a major student protest movement erupted under the banner of “Fees Must Fall”; its main demands were for greater financial support, as tuition fees represent a genuinely intolerable burden for many South Africans. It achieved only limited concessions, but was more successful in changing the political culture of universities with its “decolonisation” agenda, challenging various forms of racial inequality and legacies of white rule. The protests even washed over to Britain, where students at Oriel College, Oxford, followed their counterparts in Cape Town by demanding the removal of a statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. It was during these convulsions that the EFF secured its place as the movement of choice for young radicals, not least within the Student Representative Councils (where, at South African universities, candidates are elected as members of political parties).

When I contacted EFF representatives at leading universities, I found young activists who were articulate, strident and ideologically committed. They reminded me of the erstwhile supporters of Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, though their brand of socialism is a much purer shade of red. Hlamulo Khorommbi, student council president at the University of Cape Town, said confidently of EFF policies on land appropriation, industrialisation and state capacity: “These are things that young people want to see happen.” He told me that his generation views the record of the ANC as “a complete failure”, whereas under Malema’s party, “prospects for the youth will be limitless”. These cadres also feel a strong personal connection to the cause. As a student representative at Wits University, Michelle Mbhalati, put it: “The EFF’s ideology resonates deeply with me, especially as a young black woman.”

The rise of the EFF is, of course, part of a wider fragmentation of South African politics. As dissatisfaction with the ANC has grown, no other party has looked capable of achieving a similarly broad appeal: the main contender, the Democratic Alliance, has never achieved more than a quarter of the vote. Instead, a plethora of smaller parties has emerged. Former president Jacob Zuma has formed another breakaway party from the ANC, with a programme similarly radical to the EFF, and a similarly militant name (uMkhonto weSizwe, once the title of the armed wing of the anti-apartheid movement). It has a tribal flavour, with its strongest support in the populous Zulu heartlands of the north-east. The overall picture here is that South Africans are moving into smaller political silos, responding to movements that represent their particular identities and experiences. The EFF is, at least in part, the movement that fills this role for educated and politically engaged young South Africans. As a number of my interviewees pointed out, it is the only party whose leadership prominently features young people with academic qualifications.

But feeling represented is one thing, active participation quite another. Student activists such as Khorommbi say that “the attitude of the youth is that of thinking they can exist outside of politics”, describing voter registration drives where “we go out to the streets to humbly ask people to exercise their constitutional right”. Even within universities, the popular engagement of the Fees Must Fall period has all but vanished. Activists suggest that fellow students have succumbed to another kind of despondency by focusing on their personal prospects.

In any case, the EFF and its dubious figurehead are bound to disappoint their young supporters. Malema’s hardcore socialism, which would plunge South Africa into still greater chaos, is designed to secure a devoted following, not provide a programme for government. His movement will either continue to stoke division at the margins of politics, or it will enter a governing coalition and reveal itself to be another cynical player within a corrupt system.

Ironically though, the EFF has revealed a continuing strain of idealism within the apparent disillusionment of youth politics. Young radicals are most scathing about the empty dreams of 1994, but it is they who have taken those dreams most seriously, insofar as they still believe in politics both as a source of collective purpose and a means of pursuing justice. The tragedy is that South Africa’s governing class has become so enmeshed in games of patronage and personal enrichment that such hopeful energies can only find expression in minor parties and lost causes.

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Wessie du Toit writes about culture, design and ideas. His Substack is The Pathos of Things.

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