South Africa’s voters go to the polls today to vote in their fourth post-apartheid election. While the ruling African National Congress looks set to continue its domination of South African politics, the country’s opposition is taking a tentative step towards becoming a credible alternative to the ANC.

The ANC has easily won every election in the country since the first multi-racial election in 1994. Nelson Mandela led the ANC into the first election, before being succeeded by Thabo Mbeki, who led the party to bigger victories in 1999 and 2004. The party’s vote rose from 62% in 1994 to almost 70% in 2004, giving the ANC the two-thirds majority necessary to make constitutional changes without the support of any other party.

South Africa uses a very proportional electoral system, with 400 members of the National Assembly. 200 are elected on a national basis, while the other 200 are elected off provincial party lists. Today’s election also sees South Africans elect the legislatures in the nine provinces.

While Mbeki was dominant over all other parties in the Assembly, the challenge to his authority came from within his party, with left-leaning elements of the party putting up Jacob Zuma for the party’s Presidency in 2007. Zuma defeated Mbeki, putting himself in a position to lead the party into the next election.

Jacob Zuma’s support base included the South African trade union movement and the South African Communist Party, as well as his supporters in the Zulu community. Zuma has faced numerous accusations of corruption, with charges being brought against him in 2005, when he was Deputy President, and in 2007 shortly after he was elected ANC President. The charges were dropped on 6 April, but that hasn’t stopped the opposition parties from questioning Zuma’s integrity.

After corruption charges were dropped in September 2008, the Zuma-dominated ANC pressured Mbeki into resigning as President, and, as Zuma is not a sitting MP, the ANC’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe succeeded Mbeki. Motlanthe will step down after the election.

The ousting of Mbeki saw the departure of some Mbeki loyalists from the ANC, founding a new opposition party, the Congress of the People. The party is seen to sit to the right economically to Zuma’s ANC, with Cope supporting Mbeki’s neoliberal policy agenda. The other main opposition party is the Democratic Alliance, the successor to the white, liberal, anti-apartheid parties of the Apartheid era.

Facing the opposition of both DA and Cope, the ANC campaign has become fiercer in the last few days. ANC Youth League president Julius Malema made controversial comments against the DA’s leader, Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille, saying “Helen Zille is racist and fake, even her face is not original. Her real face is ugly, that is why she had plastic surgery. DA’s policies are just as fake as her,” while saying of Cope that “Come Wednesday, we will be burying Cope. After April 22 some among them who have weak hearts will get heart attacks and for those who have diabetes, it will be high.”

The party has also brought out the big guns, with former President and ANC leader Nelson Mandela appearing at a rally with Zuma. In contrast, Archbishop Desmond Tutu has attacked Zuma, calling him unfit for office.

The Democratic Alliance has focused on a “stop Zuma” campaign, drawing attention to the possibility of a two-thirds ANC majority, allowing the party to change the constitution on their own. Zille has raised the prospect of South Africa falling into the same economic and dictatorial trap as Zimbabwe, becoming a “failed state”.

There hasn’t been much in the way of polling of the election, but it seems clear that Zuma is headed for a slightly reduced majority, which may remove the ability of the ANC to change the constitution. The electoral commission is expecting high turnout in what has been the most interesting election in South Africa’s short history of multiracial democracy.

It’s unclear how DA and COPE will perform, and how that will shape future anti-ANC politics in South Africa, but DA leader Helen Zille may well be on track to be Premier of Western Cape, a province with high support for the DA. This may well give her a platform to present a genuine alternative to the ANC in the future, which is essential if South Africa is to be a functioning democracy in years to come.