South Africa’s 2021 local government elections will go down in history as the moment that Africa’s oldest liberation movement saw its share of the vote slip below 50 percent for the first time since the end of apartheid. The African National Congress’s (ANC) share of the vote fell from 53.91 percent in 2016 to 46 percent. This collapse was accompanied by the lowest turnout in South African electoral history. Voters opted to register their preferences with their feet rather than ballot: Only about 45.93 percent (12,035,293 voters) bothered to vote this time around, compared to 58.07 percent (15,290,820 voters) in 2016.

South African voters are gatvol (pissed off) with the ruling party and are largely dissatisfied with the political options available. This a country where almost half the country’s population is unemployed (for the youth, the figure is over 70 percent) and per capita incomes have fallen steadily for the better part of a decade. South African voters largely chose to stay home amid a pandemic, austerity, the COVID-19-ravaged economy, record unemployment, and the collapse of basic services and public security. Local governance is the most visible marker of South Africa’s crisis: Trash lies uncollected on the pothole-ridden streets, open sewage flows in public, water and electricity shortages are common. The country, in other words, is in deep shit.