Why South Africa's local elections matter

South Africans head to the polls on Wednesday amid water shortages, frustration with local services and questions over whether the ANC's support will keep falling. "We've decided not to vote. At all," Vatiswa Zoya said two days before voters in South Africa cast their ballots for new municipal government leaders. "What is the point?

We will still sleep hungry." These very same frustrations are what will lead 22-year-old Lindokuhle Mbandazayo to the polls, although she has yet to decide where to place her cross. "When we vote for councilors, we ask them to fix the area," Mbandazayo told DW. "The electricity goes off regularly here. There is also sewage in the streets, and we have to jump over this.

There are a lot of things that need to be fixed here." Both women live in Tembisa, a township in Ekurhuleni, a municipality on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city. Both express an "embedded frustration" over their living conditions. Sanusha Naidu, an analyst at the Institute for Global Dialogue, said it was this "embedded frustration" that prompts people to vote.