Nelson Mandela’s Party Isn’t Aging Well

It’s election season in South Africa. Small planes drag political slogans across autumn’s blue skies while parliamentary sessions dissolve into scenes of protest and fisticuffs far below. In April the nation’s three largest political parties staged rallies to unveil lengthy election manifestos far ahead of municipal polls on Aug. 3, with thousands of would-be voters packing into sports stadiums to show their support.

Some stadiums were more packed than others. For the governing African National Congress, the optics of its launch weren’t ideal, with awkward swaths of empty seats pictured in Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in the southern city of Port Elizabeth, where President Jacob Zuma spoke. The rally’s spotty attendance didn’t escape the attention of South African reporters, whose “preoccupation with stadium seat-counting” was later lambasted by an ANC spokesman, calling it “the new science of ‘stadiumology.’ ”