South Africans vote today in the fifth national election since the end of apartheid twenty years ago.

President Jacob Zuma’s first term has been plagued by scandal — from multiple marital indiscretions, to service delivery scandals, to the state massacre of thirty-four striking workers at Marikana, to the construction of a $21.5 million palatial fortress for his family in Nkandla. His presidency has been littered with tales of rampant corruption, state repression, and a reversion to a reactionary masculinist and ethnocentric style of politics within the African National Congress.

The proud traditions of political diversity, debate, and ideological commitment associated with African’s oldest liberation movement have disappeared and been replaced with a seedy morass of corruption, blind party loyalty, and a paranoid style of politics associated with the increasingly powerful security apparatus within the ANC. Patronage networks, particularly centered around traditional authorities (a relic of apartheid and colonialism), continue to be used to mobilize voters. All the while, thousands of protests directed at corrupt local governments and the lack of social services rage throughout the country. South Africa is also amid its longest strike ever as platinum miners continue to fight, now into month five, for a basic wage of $1,250.