A woman casts her vote at a polling station in Atteridgeville, Pretoria, South Africa, Wednesday Aug. 3, 2016.
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Though past municipal elections produced a yawn among some South Africans, Wednesday’s election has become a crucial test of the ANC’s grip on power and a referendum on the country’s embattled president, Jacob Zuma.
The African National Congress – which ended white-minority rule when it won power in the first democratic national election in 1994 – held a big lead in the overall count in nationwide municipal elections.
Zuma, hit back, saying that the historically white opposition party was never the party of Mr. Mandela and could never claim his legacy. The ANC’s steady decline could be at a tipping point in several important metropolitan areas.
“The DA has been gifted in a sense because you have an ANC that is imploding, but they will have to show that they can exploit it”, says Judith February, a governance expert. On the other hand, traders in the informal sector are refusing to accept the rand as they are afraid to hold on to a currency that was likely to lose value in a short period. “It’s just something different”, Mr. Khumalo added.
The DA had 45 percent of the votes in Tshwane municipality against the ANC’s 40 percent although only 40 percent of the votes had been counted.
Opinion polls see a particularly close race in the capital Pretoria as well as the country’s economic hub, Johannesburg, and the symbolic Nelson Mandela Bay municipality named after the anti-apartheid icon.
EFF leader Julius Malema started his day in his hometown of Seshego in Limpopo.
South African municipal election results will reveal whether the African National Congress is losing its grip on power two decades after the end of apartheid.
Still, many voters remain loyal to the party of Mr. Mandela.
“I’m voting for the current government, I am happy with its work”, said 50-year-old Benedict Tuge in Soweto.
All South Africans and first time voters in particular should exercise their hard-won right to vote, Kodwa said. Now, a record drought threatens agricultural output, food security and water supplies.
“It looks like we are going to be in government in a whole lot of places where we weren’t in government before”, said James Selfe, a senior DA executive. “I am looking forward to the results as they keep trickling in”.
The ANC has also been dogged by Mr. Zuma’s frequent brushes with scandal.
In December, respect plummeted for Zuma after he fired Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, replacing him with a little-known member of parliament, then recruited Pravin Gordhan for the job.
Free and fair elections have ultimately been South Africa’s blessing since 1994, as well as its cross to bear as a young democracy struggling to overcome more than a century of disparity and challenges. In April, Mr. Zuma survived a historic impeachment vote in parliament.
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Its MPs’ spirited protests against Mr Zuma in parliament, the broadening of its leftist policy agenda and the perception in some quarters that the Democratic Alliance is a party for whites has seen it attract a growing number of middle-class black South Africans. “Unemployment is rife and I think voting will help change that”, said William Mahlangu, 58, a pensioner, at a polling station in Pretoria.
