African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) supporters dance and sing in celebration at Wembezi township near Estcourt some 215 kilometres west of Durban.
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South African President Jacob Zuma in an election advertisement for his ruling African National Congress party.
With about half of the vote counted, the ANC had 52 percent support nationwide, with the DA on 30 percent and the radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on seven percent, according to official results.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) was on course to hold Cape Town and was just ahead in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth. It can no longer take it for granted that the black majority will blindly follow it.
“We are into an era of coalition politics”. The Democratic Alliance had an unassailable lead, nearly 69 percent of the vote, in Cape Town, the only big city not run by the ANC.
“Probably this is the first election where the ANC will be standing around 54%, 55%”, he said.
Final results were due out later in the day, with the ANC and DA neck-and-neck in both Johannesburg and Pretoria.
In the municipal elections, the ANC even lost Zuma’s hometown of Nkandla in Kwa-Zulu Natal province, where the Inkatha Freedom Party won.
The ANC and DA are on 41.84 percent and 41.72 percent of the vote respectively in Johannesburg, with the EFF on 10.81 percent; and 41.91 percent 43.49 percent in Pretoria, with the EFF on 10.57 percent. The government, which had declared Wednesday a national holiday, said turnout was good.
The vote is still neck and neck in the three hotly contested battleground areas of Johannesburg and Tshwane in Gauteng and the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in the Eastern Cape, where the DA seemed to have an upper hand.
At a press briefing on Wednesday evening, Chief Electoral Officer Mosotho Moepya said voting stations will remain open “until everybody votes”.
“Simply to form a coalition in Pretoria, the capital, would be an embarrassment”, independent analyst Daniel Silke told AFP.
Numerous leaders of the struggle against apartheid come from the area.
The DA Leader, Mr. Maimane, said he was excited by the “incredible growth” of the opposition party. “Zuma doesn’t make decisions alone so the ANC is not Zuma alone, it’s a collective”, he said.
“We will not lie and say that we are not anxious when we lose a metro like Nelson Mandela Bay”, the ANC’s chief whip in parliament, Jackson Mthembu, said in an interview in Pretoria.
South Africa’s electoral commission said late Wednesday voting proceeded smoothly and without major incident. It is contesting the local elections for the first time.
The ANC has run a positive election campaign grounded in confidence and optimism, and rooted in the organization’s outstanding service delivery track record: and the people of South Africa have spoken.
South Africans are headed to the polls today to vote in local elections, as the control of over 280 municipalities throughout the country is now up for grabs.
Zuma, who has been beset by a series of scandals, survived an impeachment vote in April after the Constitutional Court said he breached the law by ignoring an order to repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent on renovating his home.
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In December, he was widely criticised for changing his finance minister twice in a week, sending the rand plummeting and alarming investors.
