Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, seated, and African National Congress party members discuss municipal election results at the results center in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, August 5, 2016.
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The ANC received 53 percent of votes across the country, its lowest percentage ever, with the Democratic Alliance getting 26 percent.
With the nationwide vote count nearly complete, the ANC was ahead overall but recorded its worst electoral performance since white-minority rule fell 22 years ago.
Ahead of final results, the ANC looked set to remain the biggest party in Johannesburg but could lose its overall majority in the country’s economic centre.
The results of Wednesday’s voting have reshaped the political landscape in South Africa, where the ANC has ruled virtually unopposed since it ended white-minority rule in 1994, led by Nelson Mandela. Now it has lost two, including Nelson Mandela Bay, named for the ANC’s star and the country’s first black president.
“Anybody who will seek to stand up in any platform and say that the DA is a party for a particular race, particularly to say the DA is a white party, would be misleading”, Mmusi Maimane, who a year ago became the first black leader of the Democratic Alliance, said Saturday at a news conference.
The radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party led by Julius Malema, Zuma’s one-time protege but now arch-foe, was running a distant third in the local elections, with about 10 percent of the vote.
Regardless of what eventually occurs with President Zuma, it is clear that the hegemonic dominance of the African National Congress is coming to a close. “We will put it to the leadership that there are all the options whether to work with the ANC or the DA, and we might change our minds”.
“The clever blacks have spoken”, he is reported to have said, using the same “clever blacks” phrase that Mr Zuma once used to describe urban youngsters who apparently don’t feel as comfortable with the ANC as their counterparts in rural communities.
Neither it nor the ANC appeared to have a majority in Johannesburg or Tshwane that would allow it to govern alone, raising the possibility of coalition governments.
In a statement Friday, the ANC said “we will reflect and introspect where our support has dropped”.
However, Zuma, jailed on Robben Island with Mandela during apartheid, retains deep loyalty inside the ANC and in many rural areas, although he can not stand for a third term.
The opposition DA, which has roots in the anti-apartheid movement and was white-led until previous year, won Nelson Mandela Bay after fielding a white candidate for mayor.
As reporter Peter Granitz told NPR’s Newscast unit, the opposition Democratic Alliance gained control of the capital, Pretoria, and Nelson Mandela Bay, where the late Mandela hails from.
In Ekurhuleni, a manufacturing hub to the east of Johannesburg which includes the nation’s main airport, the DA obtained 48.8 per cent of votes, the ANC 34.1 per cent and the EFF 11.1 per cent.
The rand gained as the results showed the ANC losing ground, which may press the party to introduce economic reforms.
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Zuma survived an impeachment vote in April after ignoring an order by the Constitutional Court to repay some of the state funds.
