This Is South Africa's Most Important Election Since Apartheid

This famously is the year of elections — with around 40% of humanity having the chance to vote in 2024. And already it has become a bore’s charter. Sit next door to the wrong person at dinner, and many hours will pass while you hear about the crucial importance of Arab Americans to Joe Biden’s chances in the Detroit suburbs or why the Scottish National Party’s performance in Renfrewshire could determine Keir Starmer’s path to Downing Street. The justification for these lectures is always that this particular contest is a “historic” showdown. Just like they insisted the last election was.

So it’s odd that relatively little attention is being paid to the one contest that looks genuinely historic. South Africa’s election, due to be held on May 29, is the most important since the 1994 contest that vanquished apartheid and swept Nelson Mandela to power. Given the Rainbow Nation’s centrality to democracy in the world’s fastest-growing continent, it has a good claim to being Africa’s most important election for three decades too.