{"id":27399,"date":"2016-08-03T02:18:05","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T02:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-africa-elections-anc-and-jacob-zuma-face\/"},"modified":"2016-08-03T02:17:57","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T02:17:57","slug":"south-africa-elections-anc-and-jacob-zuma-face","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-africa-elections-anc-and-jacob-zuma-face\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa elections: ANC and Jacob Zuma face test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africans are going to the polls for local elections in a ballot seen as a test for President Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress.}<\/p>\n<p>The ANC has dominated the political landscape since the first all-race elections in 1994.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr Zuma has had to weather scandal, after being ordered to repay taxpayers&#8217; money spent on his private home.<\/p>\n<p>Polls show the ANC may lose three key cities in Wednesday&#8217;s poll &#8211; Pretoria, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth.<\/p>\n<p>{{ANC under pressure}}<\/p>\n<p>The ANC, which led the fight against white minority rule, is under pressure from two parties &#8211; the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, who are competing in their first local elections under firebrand leader Julius Malema.<\/p>\n<p>The economy is one of the main issues as people vote, with growth expected to be 0% this year, and unemployment at 27%.<\/p>\n<p>Protests demanding better housing and amenities have also sprung up across South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>The vote comes a month after South Africa&#8217;s treasury recommended President Zuma pay back $509,000 (\u00a3381,000) to the government for upgrades made to his private home.<\/p>\n<p>It came after the country&#8217;s highest court ruled earlier this year that Mr Zuma repay some of the $23m of public funds spent on his house in 2009, ruling that he had violated the constitution by earlier failing to repay some of the money.<\/p>\n<p>The upgrades included an amphitheatre, pool, chicken run and cattle enclosure.<\/p>\n<p>The next presidential elections are due to take place in 2019.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-13933 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_90619300_mediaitem90619299.jpg\" alt=\"The ANC is facing challenges in key cities across South Africa\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{South Africans are going to the polls for local elections in a ballot seen as a test for President Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress.} The ANC has dominated the political landscape since the first all-race elections in 1994. But Mr Zuma has had to weather scandal, after being ordered to repay taxpayers&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27399"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27399"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}