South Africa election: Overseas voters first to cast ballots

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00:00The atmosphere is actually quite festive here, voters are met with fist bumps and applause

00:04as they cast their ballots. It's the only voting center for South Africans living in France

00:09and roughly 1,000 are registered to vote here today and as you can imagine some of them have

00:14traveled from across the country to exercise their right to vote. We came from Lyon so it's

00:19about a two-hour train ride to come into Paris and obviously came for the important action of voting

00:25in our national election which we don't take for granted so pretty excited to do it today.

00:29When I was growing up we weren't allowed to vote and now it's a democratic process so it's

00:34something that I really really feel very strongly about. Abroad voting takes place about one week

00:40ahead of the votes in South Africa on May 29th. After everything has been done everything is put

00:45on the diplomatic bag sent to South Africa they are counted there and when they do that remember

00:51that everybody is there, your observers, your party agents as you can see party agents here

00:56we have ANC party agents, we have the democratic party party agents and in South Africa same thing

01:02there will be party agents, there will be observers from South Africa, there will be observers from

01:06abroad. After 30 years of dominating South African politics the ruling ANC, the African National

01:11Congress is expected to face one of its toughest elections since the end of the apartheid.

01:16Unemployment has reached a record of 32% this year, a number of corruption scandals and the collapse

01:21of some government services have left voters disillusioned. The DA, the democratic alliance,

01:26the main opposition party won over 20% of votes in the last elections and they're expected to do

01:32so once again. The economic freedom fighters EFF are expected to go head-to-head with former

01:37president Zuma's new party MK Umkut Umesizwe for the third position. But these are only predictions

01:43and the final results are expected on the evening of the 29th of May.

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