With 95 percent of votes counted the ruling ANC appears to.
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Maimane on Saturday described the results as “a tipping point for the people of South Africa”, while ANC deputy leader Cyril Ramaphosa, Zuma’s vice-president, said the party would heed the electorate’s message.
But the Democratic Alliance, lead by Mmusi Maimane, took 43 per cent of the vote, compared with the ANC’s 41 per cent.
The results for the ANC could put pressure on the 74-year-old Mr Zuma to leave office before his mandate ends in 2019, political analysts said.
As final votes were counted, the ANC was leading in economic powerhouse Johannesburg by a slim margin. 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”.
“The ANC may just become a rural party”, said William Gumede, head of the Democracy Works Foundation, a think-tank.
Acknowledging that turnout had been low in the ANC’s strongholds, Mashatile said, “Our traditional support base is still with us, but maybe not too many people came out to vote, so we need to go back and find out why”.
Cape Town: The African National Congress lost its stranglehold on South African politics as voter discontent over the struggling economy, a scarcity of jobs and scandals surrounding President Jacob Zuma cost it control of key cities and buoyed the two main opposition parties. Now it has lost two, including Nelson Mandela Bay, named for the ANC’s star and the country’s first black president. However, even if the DA loses narrowly in Johannesburg, it still shows you the giant strides being taken by the DA and other political parties because no party will obtain 50% in this powerful city.
The election also represents a political renaissance for the DA, which previous year elected its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane, as part of its efforts to shake off its image as a party that mainly serves white interests. In Alexandra, a township in Johannesburg where the ANC’s beloved leader Mandela once lived, black voters who had supported the party for years said they had finally given up and wanted to see whether another group could do better.
The ANC was unable to win in Nkandla in a personal gust with the president with Inkatha Freedom Party to retaining its hold on the region.
It has won some support from voters frustrated about inequality in a country where black people make up about 80 percent of the 54 million population, yet most of the economy in terms of ownership of land and companies remains in the hands of white people, who are about 8 percent of the population.
“We are into negotiations as we speak”, said Paul Mashatile, the ANC chairman in Gauteng province, which includes Tshwane and Johannesburg.
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The next general elections are due in 2019 but Zuma can not stand for a third term as president.
