Results from South Africa’s fiercely contested local elections could deliver a setback to the African National Congress (ANC), with early indications on Thursday showing the party that ended apartheid losing support.
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The biggest threat to the ANC comes from the main opposition Democratic Alliance, which has been courting ANC supporters promising to help create jobs and improve social services.
With about 15% of eligible voters accounted for in Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA had 56.33% to the ANC’s 34.31%.
“The DA is a haven for racists, and its upper echelons dominated by individuals who hark back to the days of apartheid”, the statement said.
While the DA’s pledge to make it easier to do business is diametrically opposed to the EFF’s call for the nationalization of mines, banks and land, both parties have said they are open to forming coalitions with each other but not the ANC, increasing the likelihood of municipalities falling into opposition hands.
A significant loss of support for Nelson Mandela’s ANC, which led South Africa’s decades-long struggle against oppressive white minority rule, would be a blow ahead of the next major test – the 2019 national elections. In the City of Joburg the DA so far has just 43% of the vote, with the ANC closely following at 41%.
The ANC has won more than 60% of the vote at every election since Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the country’s first black president in 1994.
The local election is also a mid-term reflection on the performance of President Jacob Zuma, who has been plagued by economic woes and a series of scandals since taking office in 2009.
Final results for this year’s election are expected by Friday.
“I think the ANC will obviously win because it’s the majority party and it always wins”, Thulani Mbuli, a 21-year-old unemployed Tembisa resident.
Senzo Makhubela, a 32-year-old security guard, said the ANC needed to build more houses and do more to develop areas like Diepsloot, the shantytown where he lives north of Johannesburg.
“EFF will perform very well”, party leader Julius Malema said after he voted in the northern province of Limpopo.
Millions of voters braved a vicious cold snap to queue outside polling stations Wednesday, bringing an end to a campaign marked by disputes over alleged racial slurs.
The other key effect, it said, is that the ANC will “increasingly view the tainted President Zuma as an electoral liability and seek to replace him as national president before or at the 2017 ANC elective congress, where Zuma is due to stand down as ANC party president”.
In December, he was widely criticized for changing his finance minister twice in a week, sending the rand plummeting and alarming investors.
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Analysts also predict a downgrade by credit ratings agencies to “junk” status later this year.
