South Africa’s early municipal election results on Thursday \u200bshowed the African National Congress with a sharply reduced vote share, set to weaken the long-dominant party’s control of key cities \u200csuch as Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
With 36% of votes counted by 1200 GMT, the ANC had about 32% of the vote, narrowly ahead of the Democratic Alliance (DA) on 27%, results from the election commission showed.<\/p>\n
Vote tallying was still in an early stage and the outcome could change significantly. But if those figures hold the ANC would be down about 14 percentage points \u200bfrom its last municipal election result in 2021, which was already its worst in history.<\/p>\n
The ANC, which has been South Africa’s largest \u200bparty since it led the country out of apartheid in 1994, has tended to do worse in municipal elections than \u2060nationally and has acknowledged its failures in local governance.<\/p>\n
But a dramatic loss could open up the field to more competition in the next national elections \u200bin 2029, when the pro-business DA has hopes of becoming the country’s biggest party.<\/p>\n
DA OPTIMISTIC FOR STRONG RESULT<\/strong><\/p>\n The November 4 vote was widely predicted to see \u200bthe ANC lose ground nationally as voters punished it for high crime rates, corruption scandals and failing basic services such as water and electricity.<\/p>\n A projection by South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) suggested the ANC could end up in the final tally with the same percentage of votes as it has now.<\/p>\n The CSIR projected a turnout of \u200baround 52%, which would be higher than in 2021, underscoring the level of frustration over municipal services.<\/p>\n “(The turnout) suggests that ANC voters did not stay \u200baway \u2013 as many expected \u2013 but rather showed up and voted for alternative parties,” said Louw Nel, senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa, who said an outcome of \u200c32% would \u2060be “the party’s worst nightmare coming true.”<\/p>\n The DA was performing strongly in several major cities while in KwaZulu-Natal province, both former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party and the Inkatha Freedom Party were ahead of the ANC, he said.<\/p>\n “It’s still early days. But I think we will do well and I am very excited,” said the DA’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille.<\/p>\n ANC Chairperson Gwede Mantashe remained optimistic, telling journalists that the current result trends were not final.<\/p>\n “We may improve. … \u200bMajor areas, townships, and other areas \u200bhave not been counted yet,” Mantashe \u2060said.<\/p>\n COALITION TALKS TO FOLLOW<\/strong><\/p>\n The DA declared an early victory in Cape Town, which was expected. Official data showed it had 60% of votes in Cape Town from those counted so far.<\/p>\n Johannesburg results showed the DA leading but was \u200btoo close to call, with only 17% of votes counted.<\/p>\n Winning Johannesburg would be a major boost for the \u200bDA. But it is \u2060among several key municipalities where no party is expected to get an outright majority, meaning that parties will have to negotiate to form coalition governments.<\/p>\n They will have two weeks from the declaration of results – expected on Sunday – to do so.<\/p>\n Analysts have said that best option for stability in cities such as Johannesburg would be for \u2060the ANC \u200bto partner with the DA, mirroring the arrangement they have in national government.<\/p>\n But the two \u200bare ideologically opposed on key issues such as racial redress. ActionSA, a party founded by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, was also performing strongly in early Johannesburg results and could emerge as \u200ba kingmaker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" South Africa’s early municipal election results on Thursday \u200bshowed the African National Congress with a sharply reduced vote share, set to weaken the long-dominant party’s control of key cities \u200csuch as Johannesburg. With 36% of votes counted by 1200 GMT, the ANC had about 32% of the vote, narrowly ahead of the Democratic Alliance (DA) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":7,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[1422,122],"class_list":["post-22530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-african-national-congress-anc","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22531,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22530\/revisions\/22531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}