South African leftist Economic Freedom Fighters party supporters cheer and dance during the party closing rally campaign ahead of the municipal elections at Peter Mokaba stadium on July 31 in Polokwane, South Africa. (Mujahid Safodien/AFP/Getty Images)

Mish Hlophe walked through Johannesburg’s densely packed Alexandra township one recent morning, stopping to urge people to vote. The neighborhood was once home to Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero and leader of the African National Congress, and for years Hlophe and other local residents backed the party.

But now the tavern owner is an opposition candidate in local elections on Wednesday, one of a growing number of voters disillusioned with the ANC.

“I was very active in the ANC, but they lost it,” said Hlophe, 52, who is running for ward councillor, similar to a city council member. The party has for years promised a better life for South Africans, he said, but “nothing is changing. They’ve lost touch with the people.

More than 26 million South Africans have registered to vote in this week’s elections, which are among the most closely watched since the ANC came to power in the nation’s first free vote in 1994. Though many voters remain loyal to the ANC, the balloting may signal growing discontent over yawning inequality, 26 percent unemployment, and a string of high-profile government scandals.

Young South Africans have emerged as an especially unpredictable group. Nearly half of the electorate has reached voting age since 1994, according to the London-based Africa Research Institute. Many of them don’t have the same ties to the ANC as their parents did.

A man passes an African National Congress political poster in the township of Khayelitsha on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, Aug. 1, 2016. (Schalk Van Zuydam/AP)

Hlophe’s party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), has been adept at tapping into young South Africans’ concerns about jobs and corruption. The three-year-old party, known for its far-left rhetoric and its members’ uniforms of red jumpsuits and Che Guevara-style berets, has been running its first municipal-level campaign this year on the promise of being South Africa’s “last hope.”

When a young Mandela lived in Alexandra in the 1940s as a law clerk, the township was nicknamed “Dark City” because of its lack of electricity. Today there’s power, but residents say it’s too expensive. They’re frustrated that they can’t find jobs and are crowded into shacks, with sewage running outside in open gutters.

“My parents vote for the ANC,” said Lesedi Mlotshwa, a 22-year-old resident, perusing a flier from the EFF. So did he in the last national elections in 2014, but now he is considering a switch. “We’re young, so we’re thinking about change.”

[South Africa is still struggling to fulfill Mandela’s hopes and dreams]

The ANC won more than 62 percent of the vote in 2014, and observers say it still has significant support. Many voters rely on the party’s patronage networks in rural areas, and some South Africans feel the opposition does not offer a credible alternative.

Nevertheless, recent polls suggest that the ANC may be defeated in a few key municipalities: Johannesburg, the country’s economic hub; ­Tshwane, which includes Pretoria, the country’s administrative capital; and Nelson Mandela Bay, a traditional ANC stronghold.

Those cities are “game changers,” said Mcebisi Ndletyana, an associate professor of politics at the University of Johannesburg. Any loss of ground, he said, would signal that “the ANC is increasingly driven toward the periphery,” deepening the country’s rural-urban divide .

The ANC’s stiffest competition is likely to come from the Democratic Alliance, a liberal-centrist party that already governs Cape Town. But the EFF is expected to peel away votes, too, setting up a highly competitive national election in 2019.

The ANC has achieved some important advances while in power. The life expectancy of South Africans has increased by more than eight years in the past decade, thanks in part to the government’s establishment of the world’s largest HIV treatment program. Access to water and electricity has improved, and poverty has dropped.

But for some, things are looking gloomy in the Rainbow Nation. Protests are common in areas with poor access to water, power and sanitation, and President Jacob Zuma’s approval rating among city-dwellers plunged from 33 percent in March 2015 to 21 percent in February, according to a poll by market research firm TNS. In March, the nation’s highest court ruled that Zuma failed to uphold the constitution by not repaying taxpayer money spent on upgrades to his private estate, Nkandla. That judgment sparked widespread calls for him to step down.

So far, the party leadership has stood behind Zuma, saying it is confident that it has voters’ support because of its record on development.

“Nobody cannot see what the ANC is doing,” Zuma told SABC News, the public broadcaster, at a rally Friday in Soweto, outside Johannesburg. “We are doing things that were never done by anyone before.”

[Deaths of two black farmers prompts a racial reckoning in South Africa]

The EFF, led by firebrand Julius Malema, a former ANC youth leader, has been especially aggressive in criticizing the government. Since the scandal over Zuma’s estate, it has refused to recognize the president’s legitimacy. In April, Malema warned that if the ANC responds violently to peaceful protests, “we will run out of patience very soon, and we will remove this government through the barrel of a gun.”

Critics say that kind of rhetoric runs contrary to the nation’s democratic values and that the party’s policies pose a dire threat to an economy that is already on shaky ground. But some analysts say the party is unlikely to attract a broad following.

“There is a deep love affair between the EFF and the media,” said Steven Friedman, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of Johannesburg. “It’s good theater and it’s good copy.”

Recent polls indicate that the party is set to win just under 9 percent of the vote in Johannesburg, compared with nearly 36 percent for the Democratic Alliance and 32 percent for the ANC.

But the competition may give the ANC a wake-up call. At an election rally in Tembisa, a township about an hour’s drive from Johannesburg, Thomas Sephesu hoisted his 6-year-old daughter onto his shoulders to catch a glimpse of Malema speaking to a crowd.

Sephesu, 39, used to vote for the ANC but grew tired of what he called the party’s “games.”

“We need a strong opposition that will make them shake a little bit,” he said. “If we could get all the youth to vote today, the EFF would win.”

Whoever they support, South Africa’s youth can have influence only if they show up. In the last national elections, just one-third of 18- and 19-year-olds registered to vote, compared with two-thirds of people between the ages of 20 and 29, a figure that reflects dissatisfaction with the country’s political system, said Lauren Tracey, a researcher with the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank.

“There is hype around the idea that [the youth] are going to go out and vote, but that may not be the case,” Tracey said. “It’s a concern going forward if young people are not happy and are questioning the effectiveness of elections.”

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