Faced with its support dipping below the 50% mark in its worst elections since the advent of democracy in 1994, the ANC is steeling itself for concessions that will enable it to form coalitions in key municipalities across the country.
The party’s revival under President Cyril Ramaphosa, who travelled to Eswatini on Tuesday to meet King Mswati III and discuss that country’s political crisis, is set to suffer a blow, with results so far showing little or no chance of it winning back metros it lost control of in 2016.
The losses then were blamed on widespread dissatisfaction as the state capture scandals of Jacob Zuma’s presidency became increasingly public. But the party is set to perform even worse now with just under 47% share of the national vote, compared with 56% then, according to projections from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
Fikile Mbalula, the ANC’s head of elections, said the party is willing to make concessions where necessary. These may include the EFF’s manifesto commitment to open clinics for 24 hours a day.
"Remember that we still have [the] manifesto from the last election that we are implementing so there are concessions in that manifesto that we need to fast-track and ensure that they are realised and if not we will continue to face challenges of anger from our voters," he told Business Day.
ANC majorities in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni were seen as out of reach on Tuesday night, with the Electoral Commission of SA having declared about 60% of the vote. Other key metropolitan areas such as Mangaung in the Free State, eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal and Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape were on a knife edge.
This expected result puts the ANC, SA’s dominant political force since 1994, in a position where it may have to beg opposition parties to enter partnerships that would allow it to govern key cities and towns.
Ramaphosa’s personal popularity hasn’t been enough to stem losses as Covid-19 and the resulting lockdowns knocked the economy into its biggest slump in a century and unemployment surged to a record above 34%. The recession fed voter complaints about failings such as the collapse of infrastructure, and the lack of basic services such as rubbish collection and the delivery of water.
If coalition talks fail, Mbalula says the ANC is willing to sit on the opposition benches as it has done in Cape Town, which has been governed by the DA since 2006.
Sanusha Naidu, political analyst at the Institute of Global Dialogue, said it is crucial that the parties finalise coalitions quickly to minimise disruption in metros that are seen as key to the economy. "The economic heartland lies in the classic metros in Gauteng … KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape — all considered for their transactional value [in] pivotal logistics, transport and trade offerings."
The CSIR, SA’s premier research & development organisation, showed the ANC winning above 50% in Buffalo City in the Eastern Cape. The DA was set to retain Cape Town with 55.6%, seeing off challengers including Patricia de Lille’s GOOD, which got 3.9% there.
While the focus will be on results that are devastating for the ANC, the DA failed to take advantage and will probably see its national backing drop about five percentage points to 22.4%, as it continues to bleed support from the Right to the Freedom Front Plus. Former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA chipped away at the black middle class vote the DA gained under its former leader, Mmusi Maimane.
Kingmaker
ActionSA, which is projected to be the kingmaker in Gauteng’s three metros, is unlikely to support a coalition with the ANC, with Mashaba saying it was willing to talk to any other party, including the DA, from which he resigned in 2019.
“EFF in the three years that I was mayor really supported our popular stance and we worked well... The EFF has never approached me to discuss tenders but I can’t say the same about the DA,” he said.
In Tshwane, where the DA has led since 2016, an inconclusive result will enable the FF Plus to play a role in governing, said FF Plus head of elections, Wouter Wessels.
“People in Tshwane realised that they can make us stronger to be a coalition partner,” said Wessels.
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