By early on Tuesday night, it appeared that smaller parties had made significant gains in the Western Cape, particularly in the rural hinterland.
But it was too early to deliver a verdict on their impact in Cape Town. At the time of going to press the DA had obtained 59.68% of the vote in the Mother City, the ANC 16.61% and the Cape Coloured Congress 4.23% with 21% of the vote counted, according to the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) results dashboard.
Big DA strongholds in the southern and northern suburbs had not yet been counted. According to the DA, the IEC will finalise the Cape Town result only by Thursday.
In the province as a whole, 57% of the vote had been counted by Tuesday night.
Altogether 53 parties contested the election in Cape Town while 96 were in play in the province as a whole. Many of these parties won less than one percent of the vote.
The DA won four of the 30 municipalities outside Cape Town outright, with 14 of them hung municipalities, of which six were formerly controlled by the DA. This means there will be many coalition governments in the province.
In hung municipalities such as Saldanha Bay, Beaufort West, Oudtshoorn and Knysna, small local parties either won the most votes — such as the Independent Civic Organisation of SA (Icosa) in Kannaland — or were kingmakers. Patricia de Lille’s Good will be the kingmaker at least in Saldanha Bay, Theewaterskloof and Witzenberg.
The smaller parties include Icosa, Knysna Independent Movement, Karoo Democratic Force, Karoo Gemeenskap Party, Dienslewerings Party, Cederberg Eerste, Active United Front and the Freedom Front Plus.
The DA’s campaign manager for Cape Town, Benedicta van Minnen, said smaller parties did not appear to have made the huge impact on the DA vote as feared. “The smaller parties do not seem to have made any inroads at all, particularly the small niche parties” such as the Cape Independence Party.
She said rain had affected the turnout of ANC voters more than those of the DA. But delays by the IEC had resulted in long queues of voters waiting for a long time, and this was also a major issue.
Van Minnen attributed the DA’s success in Cape Town to it having controlled the municipality for 15 years and to voters sticking to a “trusted brand” that had ensured the city was “the best run in the country”. She also believed that the “young, exciting” DA mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis had managed to inspire people with his message that a DA-controlled council would do better.
Political analyst Daniel Silke says smaller parties, particularly those representing coloured communities on the Cape Flats, have eroded some of the support of the ANC and the DA in Cape Town, but this was relatively limited.
“I don’t think they have reached any critical mass in terms of their support levels, but there has been a splintering at the edges of the DA” and also of the ANC.
“The big incumbents have borne the brunt of voter dissatisfaction, but it is less acute for the DA in the Western Cape than it is for the ANC in Gauteng. And that is probably a reflection of better governance overall that the DA can justifiably boast about compared to really weak governance in ANC strongholds in other parts of the country.”
Silke says rural areas had a dynamic differing from that of urban areas, a trend apparent across SA. Rural councils in the Western Cape had been “woefully mishandled”, with infighting and a lack of capacity the order of the day. This had created frustration among voters and caused them to seek alternatives in smaller parties.
“People are putting their trust in people they regard as local as opposed to imports into the area.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.