South Africans voted in local elections on Wednesday that could see the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and its scandal-hit leader lose control of the capital and other key cities for the first time since the end of apartheid.
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The DA won Nelson Mandela Bay, which includes the city of Port Elizabeth, with 46.5 percent support, compared to the ANC’s 41.6 percent, and increased its majority in Cape Town. Final results are expected later today (Aug 5) Friday.
Image copyright EPA Image caption The vote is seen as a possible indicator for the general election due in 2019 Media captionWhat matters to young South African voters?
The City of Cape Town is under the control of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), but the African National Congress (ANC) has vowed to take over Cape Town from the DA.
The next general elections are due in 2019 but Mr Zuma can not stand for a third term as president.
The DA was on 27 percent with the radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) on seven percent, according to official results.
While little has yet been established in relation to the makeup of potential coalition partnerships, the ANC is likely to come out the loser in a number of metros.
While poor service delivery and high unemployment rates will have played a part in the ANC’s decline, so too will the constant scandals and allegations of corruption that have swirled around Mr Zuma, who has led the party since 2007 and been South Africa’s president from 2009. “This will continue to put pressure on the ANC and Zuma in particular”.
“There are so many negative things that are said about ANC but I’m thinking about what (Mandela) went through under apartheid so I’m just doing it for him”, said Lebogang Maponyane, a 43-year-old unemployed woman from Soweto, after voting for the ANC.
Shockwaves reverberated across the country when results of Nkandla, Zuma’s rural area and where he voted, showed that the ANC had lost the ward to IFP. The election provides the first major test for DA leader Mmusi Maimane and will be a major indicator of his appeal to elusive working-class black voters.
“I will never work with the ANC – if you are a ruling party and you get less than 50 per cent, our people are telling us that they do not want you to be government – why would we bring you with a backdoor – they must sit in the opposition benches and humble themselves for five years and keep in mind to never again be given a mandate and play with it like they have been playing with our people’s votes for the last 22 years”.
Even if the ANC maintains its hold on power through inter-party alliances, any overall drop in support would be a loss, said Silke.
The EFF, which won six percent of the national vote in 2014, advocates land redistribution without compensation and the nationalisation of mines.
Many South Africans who queued up to vote said they were anxious about Zuma’s performance and the state of Africa’s most industrialised economy, where only one in four in the labour force is unemployed.
But this was down sharply from 62 percent in the 2011 municipal elections, suggesting voters are losing patience with Zuma, who rattled investors in December by changing finance ministers twice in a week, sending the rand currency plummeting.
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Zuma has said he would repay some of the funds spent on his home and rejected criticism of his conduct.
