South Africa’s ruling ANC has lost control of the symbolic Nelson Mandela Bay as it faces its biggest election setback since taking power 22 years ago.
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Mr Zuma’s office said he would attend the announcement of the final election results.
The Democratic Alliance already runs the country’s second largest city, Cape Town, the only major city where blacks are in the minority among white and mixed-race residents.
Unemployment, a stagnating economy and scandals around President Jacob Zuma led voters to punish the ANC, changing the outlook for national elections in 2019 and potentially emboldening Zuma’s rivals within the ANC to challenge him. It also won in another of the country’s top six municipalities, Nelson Mandela Bay.
The DA was once considered a champion of the white middle classes and has its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane.
The result further broadens the reach of the Democratic Alliance, which traditionally has been led by white South Africans, and which the ANC attacked during the campaign as a party of white leaders and black stooges.
Across the country, the ANC has maintained a majority of support with strong showings in rural areas, but it has slipped below the key bellwether of 60% on the national stage.
At the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) national results centre in Pretoria, a jubilant EFF secretary general Godrich Gardee expressed delight that ANC mayoral candidate Mzwandile Masina might not, after all, become the metro’s mayor.
The ANC was left bruised and the DA energised, while the EFF emerged as kingmakers following one of the most hotly-contested elections in post-democratic South Africa.
As The Associated Press reported, the ANC “had never lost a major majority-black municipality” until this vote, and Zuma was so confident going into the race that he recently claimed the organization would rule “until Jesus comes back”.
It has been pushing hard to win supporters in other regions.
After the latest election, Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president, responded in a way that exemplified the best tradition of the ANC.
“Now we’ve got to do everything in our power to make sure where we govern we govern well”, said Maimane, who declared that his party had won in Tshwane, well before the final tally. For too long‚ the ANC has misgoverned our country with impunity. Including voting for ward councillors, the ANC had 53,8% support and the DA 27%.
The president survived an impeachment vote in April after the Constitutional Court said he breached the law by ignoring an order to repay some of $16 million in state funds spent on renovating his private home.
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The World Bank says the country has one of the highest rates of inequality in the world.
