"Three decades after the end of apartheid, the African National Congress (ANC) is facing the prospect of being voted out of power," said analysts Adriaan Basson and Qaanitah Hunter, writing ahead of Wednesday's election. "Most young people, who have shown political apathy towards voting in the past, and who are the demographic group that will determine the outcome of this election, will vote the ANC out of power," said University of the North West academic Dominic Maphaka. In 1994, the former Marxist-Leninist national liberation movement led by Mandela was elected with 62.65% of the vote, forming a Government of National Unity, as per the interim constitution at the time, with a "Tripartite Alliance" formed since 1990, after Mandela's release, with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). In the early years of democracy under the Government of National Unity (1994-1999) led by Mandela, and then under his successor Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008), South Africa saw economic and social progress. However, the ANC has been in decline since 2014, reaching a low of 57.5% in 2019. Basson and Hunter, writing in a book on the democratic transition, argue that the ANC's performance over three decades of democracy mirrors that of other liberation movements in the Southern African region, which have failed to transition to "functional governing parties" after decades in power, pointing to Zambia, where founding father Kenneth Kaunda was voted out after 27 years in power by trade union leader Frederick Chiluba in 1991, and neighbouring Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe was ousted in a party coup in 2017 after a 37-year dictatorship. In South Africa, opinion polls have consistently shown that the ANC will fail to win the 50% of the vote needed to form a majority government after Wednesday's national and provincial elections. The ANC currently holds 230 of the 400 seats in parliament (57.50%), while the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) and the radical left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have 84 and 44 seats respectively. A "protest vote" against the ANC, particularly among the youth aged 15-34, who face an unemployment rate of 45.5%, is seen as a "make-or-break" issue for the country's future after 29 May. South Africa's population has grown from 51.7 million in 2011 to 62 million in 2022, according to the census conducted that year. Economically, official figures show that South Africa, which recorded GDP growth of 1.9% in 2022, has been battling an unemployment rate of 32.9% since the first quarter of 2024, a key election issue, along with gender-based violence and the expropriation of private property without compensation. Some 28 million people currently receive government social grants, and South African society is also battling endemic levels of public corruption, high levels of poverty, violent crime, and the decay of key public infrastructure and services. "In effect, the 2024 election is a referendum on the future of the country," said Adriaan Basson, noting that, after the "miracle" of 1994, coalition governments "are not a new phenomenon" in South Africa. In 1994, a coalition deal between the ANC, the National Party (NP) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) allowed for a truce between the three belligerents, and led to the formation of a Government of National Unity until a new constitution was adopted in 1996, which lasted until 1999. However, with the exception of the Western Cape province, where a coalition of opposition parties led by the Democratic Alliance (DA) unseated the ANC in the provincial legislature in 1999 and in the City of Cape Town in 2006, South Africa's experience with coalition governments at local government level has been "chaotic" since 2016, leading to a deterioration in service delivery, according to several local analysts. South Africa's general election, scheduled for 29 May, will be contested by 52 political parties at national level, according to the Electoral Commission. Read Also: South African parties close most important campaign in 30 years (Portuguese version)