With about two-thirds of the vote counted, the ANC had won 54% of the national vote, compared to the Democratic Alliance, which held 27%.
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As the final results of Wednesday’s elections were announced Saturday night, it was clear that the ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela, had suffered steep declines in support in almost all of South Africa’s major urban areas, where middle-class black voters punished a party that is now known as much for its culture of corruption as for its heroic liberation past. It was founded by Mr John Langalibalele Dube on January 8, 1912 in Bloemfontein as the South African Native National Congress with the main aim of ending the despicable, inhuman system of apartheid and giving blacks and mixed race Africans the right to vote.
Voter disenchantment came to a head, with South Africans handing wins to the Democratic Alliance party, which had a white party leader until previous year.
Up to this point, the ANC has basically been counting on historic support from blacks all over South Africa to win elections, but that support continues to disappear.
The local elections are being seen as an indication of the mid-term popularity of President Zuma.
Despite its strong showings in Port Elizabeth and Pretoria the DA will need coalition partners, which Silke sees as problematic.
The ANC, which has ruled Africa’s most-industrialized economy since the first multiracial elections in 1994, lost control of Cape Town, the legislative capital, to an opposition coalition in 2006.
“It is clear that South African voters have identified strongly with the DA”. Although the ANC will keep a majority of their seats after this election, the insurgent opposition parties of the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters have made significant progress in their development. They must build an accessible local government regardless of which party controls the municipality, ‘ Mr Zuma said shortly after the results were final.
Scandals swirling around Zuma have also hurt the ANC. Opposition groups have seized on the revelation that the state paid more than $20 million for upgrades to Zuma’s private home.
It even lost Nelson Mandela Bay, named for the country’s revered first black president.
“If you ask people in Nelson Mandela Bay what they voted for they said, ‘We voted for change, ‘” DA leader Mmusi Maimane said. As we reported, the Constitutional Court recently disagreed and said “the visitors’ center, amphitheater, cattle kraal, chicken run and swimming pool at the Zuma residence, Nkandla, do not have a security rationale”.
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Malema has drawn support with promises to redistribute among poor black people wealth still mostly in white hands – policies that both the DA and the ANC have not found palatable.
