Members of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) including the organization’s leadership were out on the streets in major cities, making door-to-door visits to encourage citizens to go out and vote.
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With less than 1 percent of votes left to be counted Saturday, the race for the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, remains too close to call. The main opposition group has so far won more than 26 percent of the nationwide municipal vote, according to the partial election results.
The historically low popular vote has many onlookers wondering if South Africa is on the verge of entering a new political atmosphere of competitive parties and coalition government.
This time, it has been challenged by corruption scandals and a stagnant economy that has frustrated the urban middle class, while protests in poor communities demanding basics like electricity and water have been common.
Other traders said the rand also got support from investors seeking higher yields after the Bank of England cut interest rates for the first time since 2009 on Thursday, while near-term US rate hike prospects cool.
The municipal vote comes against the backdrop of rising anger among voters at high unemployment and a lack of basic services as Africa’s most industrialised country teeters on the edge of a recession, as well as a string of corruption scandals surrounding Zuma. The ruling party lost the southern Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, a key port and vehicle manufacturing hub. The party already conceded defeat to its rival, the Democratic Alliance (DA), in Port Elizabeth, an industrial city in Western Cape province. It has been pushing hard to win supporters in other regions, saying its brand is good governance. The slogans, a contradiction of the ANC’s multiracial traditions, failed to dent the growth of the DA under its first black leader, 36-year-old former pastor Mmusi Maimane.
“What it really will say is that few results are certain in South African politics any more and that the certainty the ANC has enjoyed for so long would simply be negated”. He said the idea that his party was a white one has been “completely shattered”.
“I think that to me says that our message got through – it says our people heard us and South Africans still believe in a dream of a non-racial South Africa”. “The 2019 campaign starts now”, he said.
The loss, in local polls that are the sternest test the ANC has faced since the end of apartheid in 1994, will also smart because it was at the hands of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a Zulu nationalist party, which widened its tally in the area to 54 percent from 46 percent in 2011.
The radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, which is led by Julius Malema, Zuma’s one-time protege, is participating in only its second election and was running a distant third in the votes counted.
The results, which were expected to be concluded on Friday, open up a new era of local coalition politics in South Africa.
ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu said the party was chastened by the results.”We need to have a serious introspection”, he admitted.
Many South Africans who queued up to vote across the country said they were anxious about Zuma’s performance and the state of the economy, where one in four in the labor force is unemployed. The case went to the Constitutional Court, which said Zuma had violated the constitution and instructed the president to reimburse the state for $507,000, an amount that was determined by the national treasury.
Many South Africans are also concerned over allegations that Mr Zuma is heavily influenced by the Guptas, a wealthy business family of immigrants from India.
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Associated Press writer Christopher Torchia in Johannesburg contributed.
