From the right, the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s largest opposition party, has seized control of important cities such as Cape Town and Tshwane, appealing to middle-class voters fed up with economic stagnation, official corruption, and poor public services.
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Since South Africa’s first all-race election in 1994, the African National Congress party has had widespread support on the strength of its successful fight against white-minority rule.
With counting nearly over on Saturday, the DA has 43 per cent of the vote compared with the ANC’s 41 per cent in Tshwane, the municipality that includes Pretoria, the BBC reported. But it lost among other places in Port Elizabeth municipality, which the party had renamed the Nelson Mandela Bay, despite invoking anti-apartheid messaging in its campaign. “The ANC was leading the Democratic Alliance there, 43 percent to 39 percent”. On social media, South Africans mocked Zuma’s recent claim that the ANC would rule “until Jesus comes back”. This may include spending measures that could require breaching expenditure ceilings or “redistributive regulatory policies” that might undermine economic growth, the company said in an e-mailed statement Friday. The party that has controlled South Africa since the end of Apartheid will still maintain a hold of its seats. The defeat was viewed a humiliating blow for the ANC in Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, known for its history which depicts it as a hotbed of anti-apartheid activism.
Observers say a host of corruption scandals and internal party squabbles are to blame for the ANC’s decline.
Rating companies are taking opposing views of what the fallout will be from the loss of support for South Africa’s ruling party in local government elections.
The ANC managed to cling on to the hotly-contested Johannesburg seat. A more radical opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, was third with 7.15 percent but had not won any councils.
Final results of municipal elections were being announced at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT).
The elections are widely viewed as a referendum on President Jacob Zuma, the leader of South Africa and the party’s head, as Granitz reported on Morning Edition.
Voter disenchantment came to a head, with South Africans handing wins to the Democratic Alliance party, which had a white party leader until past year.
The party’s poor showing this week also showed the extent of frustration over the economy, which has been made worse by Mr. Zuma’s erratic decisions, and anger over one of the world’s highest levels of income inequality.
“We can confirm that we are into (coalition) negotiations as we speak”, Paul Mashatile, the ANC chairman in Gauteng province, said on Saturday.
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“The corroded moral authority of the ANC under Zuma is one of the factors, and his name keeps featuring in major political scandals”.
