Less than two weeks after South Africans go to the polls on April 14th this year, the international community will be fed images and narratives from massive ANC sponsored '10 years of democracy' celebrations. The twinning of these celebrations with the release of the federal election results will obscure an international visibility of on the ground mobilizations against the ANC by South Africa's most marginalized people.

 
Less than two weeks after South Africans go to the polls on April 14th this year, the international community will be fed images and narratives from massive ANC sponsored '10 years of democracy' celebrations. The twinning of these celebrations with the release of the federal election results will obscure an international visibility of on the ground mobilizations against the ANC by South Africa's most marginalized people. They will also serve to legitimize the South African neoliberal project and reinforce the ANC governments international reputation as a government that is truly loved by its people. What must be made visible is that from underneath the continued reign of the ANC government, community groups across the country are encouraging election boycotts and non participation in the electoral process.

At the same time as the national and international propaganda machine of the ANC remains seemingly invincible, a strong resistance to their politics is building. Due to the inflated and highly undemocratic R200,000 ($40,000 CDN) fee to run for office, this opposition is being forced to organize outside of the electoral framework. It is from community based social movements within South Africa that resistance to the ANC is being generated, even though these groups are separate from union, NGO or institutional structures and thus lack basic financial support and resources in order to fund even a basic public awareness campaign.

The reasons for organizing a campaign against voting for the ANC become clear when the ‘transition’ that has occurred since 1994 is viewed through the lens of the nation’s poor majority. University of Kwa Zulu Natal research fellow Ashwin Desai explains that after 1994, “although the black elite became rapidly richer and the white poor became rapidly poorer... in general terms whites got richer and blacks got poorer