Analysis: Today's Elections in South Africa

Voters go to the polls in South Africa today. It is a betting certainty that the African National Congress will retain power, with Jacob Zuma as President. Christian Hennemeyer argues in Global Post, however, that the evolution from "dictatorship to democracy" is still impressive:

South Africa's extraordinary, ordinary elections

Jacob Zuma, the man who will in all likelihood be elected South Africa’s next president, has been accused of corruption and rape.

Helen Zille, the white mayor of Cape Town and head of one of the main opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance, has been called a racist and a colonialist — although these charges are widely seen as unfounded.

The other main opposition party, the Congress of the People (Cope) — which made history it broke away from the African National Congress last year — seems more interested in internal wrangling than in mounting a serious campaign to be the election spoiler.

The good news is that the run-up to South Africa's national elections looks and sounds a lot like routine politics in the western world, full of venom and vituperation, and less like the brutal and bogus polls held by many other developing nations. After the bloodshed and chaos of recent elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, for example, South Africa’s exercise in democracy is cause for celebration.

When upwards of 23 million South Africans cast their votes on April 22nd, it will mark the fourth time the country has held free elections since the end of white minority rule in 1994. That these elections are expected to be generally peaceful and reflective of the will of the people is an accomplishment whose importance cannot be overstated.

Somehow, in less than a generation, a country that was once the world’s pariah has transformed itself from dictatorship to democracy. Equally impressive is that fact that many citizens now view the right to vote as an ordinary almost banal fact of political life.

But these elections are extraordinary as well, because how South Africa deals with its many daunting challenges has implications far beyond its borders. With a population of nearly 50 million, the continent’s biggest economy, most impressive infrastructure, and a global moral authority embodied by the country’s first black President Nelson Mandela, South Africa is the continent’s giant.

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