There’s a bit of a wait for the final list of candidates who will be standing in the 2024 national and provincial elections. Not least, this because the Electoral Court is still deciding whether or not the MK Party can put Jacob Zuma at the top of its list, since the former president has served jail time and therefore may be disqualified for duty.
The initial lists of candidates which were published at the end of March for public comment, and they are subject to change and approval, they do reveal the main intentions of all parties in terms of who is in favour. Zuma is number one on MK’s list, for example, which means that if MK wins one seat in the national assembly, he’s the person they would most like to fill it. For obvious reasons, other leaders (Cyril Ramaphosa, John Steehuisen, Herman Mashaba, etc) also occupy slot one on the national lists for their respective parties.
There are, however, three separate lists of candidates to peruse, available at this link. There are two lists for national elections: 200 seats are allocated to parties based on a national vote, with 200 seats allocated from a regional list that includes independent candidates. The third list is for candidates standing for provincial assembly. While no candidate is allowed to stand for more than one party, they can appear on multiple lists. The former mayor of Nelson Mandela Bay, Athol Trollip, is number two on ActionSA’s list behind party founder Herman Mashaba, but first on the list for provincial elections for the Eastern Cape. This might suggest that ActionSA only expects to return one seat in the national parliament, or that the are expecting Trollip to make a choice should they get the votes in both national and provincial polls.
In total, across all three lists, there are 9 846 names. Helpfully, for our purposes, each nomination also includes a partial ID number, from which we can extract the candidate’s date of birth. From this we know that the average age of a candidate is 45. There are 10 candidates aged just 18, while the Pan-African Congress of Azania is fielding the two eldest candidates, both 84 years old.
The distribution of candidate ages is shown in the chart below.
How old is my candidate?
Appropriately, the South African Youth Power Party has the lowest average age, at just 32, while the ANC has the eighth oldest cohort of candidates, with an average age of 50. The average age of a DA candidate is 47, and an EFF one is 41.
In the chart below, we’ve taken a look at the age ranges of the parties fielding the youngest and eldest candidates, and the age ranges of the main parties (ANC, DA, EFF and so on). At 64 years between their youngest and eldest candidates, MK and the Pan-African Congress of Azania have the widest age ranges represented, closely followed by the VF+.
Overall, there is a slight bias towards older candidates in that they appear higher up the list order, and are therefore more likely to gain a seat, but this is not a particularly clear trend.
As the elections draw closer, we’ll be delving into more detail around election data as it becomes available. Keep an eye on our data explorer, created in partnership with the South African National Editor’s Forum, as it is updated over the next few weeks.
