(30 May 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cape Town – 30 May 2024
1. Various of a newspaper stand in a bookshop showing post-election headlines
2. Wide pan of waterfront at Cape Town harbor
3. People walking by the waterfront
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Khensani Godase, Cape Town resident:
"Our political system as it is, it’s not okay, in a sense that it does not serve its people. But then it serves those who are already in power and that is my perspective on it. So, I am expecting a new (ruling political) party, I am not going to be specific as to which party but then maybe EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) because ever since it has never had a chance to rule. So, we do not know what to expect from it, but then I think it is good for us to embrace change, if we want change."
5. Various of Cape Town streets
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Dale Titus, Cape Town resident:
"What I expect from the election is that ANC (African National Congress) maintains national power and I feel that DA (Democratic Alliance) will maintain provincial power here in the Western Cape. Expectations? What can you say with South African politics? It is all the same. I do not think much will change in terms of improvement. I don’t think much will change. I just think politicians are all there for themselves basically. I don’t think anything much will change."
7. Various of Cape Town streets
STORYLINE:
South Africans in Cape Town gave a mixed reaction on Thursday to early election results which show the long-ruling African National Congress (ANC) below 50% in the vote, raising the possibility that they may lose their majority.
Very early counts put the ANC at just over 42%. With only just over 16% of votes counted and declared, it was only a partial picture after Wednesday’s election.
If the ANC is denied a majority, it would be the first time since they swept to power under Nelson Mandela at the end of apartheid in 1994.
The final results of a vote that could bring the biggest political shift in South Africa’s young democracy were expected to take days, with the independent electoral commission saying they would be delivered by Sunday.
South Africans were set to wait with baited breath to see if their country, Africa’s most advanced economy, was about to see momentous change.
"We do not know what to expect from it, but then I think it is good for us to embrace change, if we want change," said Cape Town resident Khensani Godase.
The electoral commission was projecting a 70% voter turnout in this election, up from the 66% in the last national election in 2019. The ANC won 57.5% of the vote in that last election, its worst performance to date.
This election was seen as a direct referendum on the unbroken three-decade rule of the ANC, which freed South Africa from the oppressive, racist apartheid regime in the famous all-race vote of 1994 but has seen a steady decrease in its popularity over the last 20 years.
"I don’t think much will change. I just think politicians are all there for themselves basically. I don’t think much will change," another Cape Town resident, Dale Titus, said.
The results that had been declared were from less than 4,000 of the more than 23,000 polling stations across the nine provinces that make up South Africa and there was a long way to go in the counting process.
Nearly 28 million people out of South Africa’s population of 62 million were registered to vote.
AP video shot by Jackson Njehia
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