With most votes of the 2021 local government elections counted, the ANC’s support remains below 50%, leaving the party that has been governing SA since 1994 with no choice but to form coalitions in crucial metros.
On Wednesday night with nearly 80% of the votes captured, the outcome of the municipal elections has become clearer with the ANC’s national support at 46.19% of the vote followed by the DA at 21.80% and the EFF with 10.30%.
The Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) is expected to announce the official results this week within seven days as required by the law.
The results from the IEC by Wednesday showed more than 50 hung councils out of the country’s 257 municipalities, paving the way for coalitions. The ANC has conceded that though it is leading the pack in terms of votes, the amount of support it has managed to garner in the polls is insufficient for it to govern councils without forming coalitions.
The hung councils include the crucial metros of Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, which it lost to the DA in 2016. The ANC’s support in two of the three Gauteng metros — Johannesburg and Tshwane — has dipped to 36.06% and 30.6% respectively thus far. The ANC may once again be required to form a coalition with smaller opposition parties to govern Ekurhuleni, having won only 37.75% of the vote followed by the DA at 29.03% and the EFF at 13.75% of the vote thus far.
To avoid “marriages of inconvenience” the ANC’s deputy secretary-general, Jessie Duarte, said the party will only get into bed with like-minded parties and will not compromise on principles of transformations and BEE.
“Most of these coalitions, which were led by the opposition have been untidy, messy and premised on gaining power as an end in itself. This has resulted in unstable and self-serving entities,” she said.
The IFP is tipped to be the official opposition in KwaZulu-Natal, taking over from the DA, which only managed to garner 10.46% of the vote compared with the IFP’s 27.29%. The ANC is leading with 41.97% of the votes but is set to lose its traditional strongholds to the opposition parties including the uMngeni municipality. Attempts to wrest former president Jacob Zuma’s hometown of Nkandla from the IFP failed again.
With 79% of the Western Cape’s provincial results counted, the DA was sitting with 54.65% of the provincial vote and the ANC with 18.89% according to the Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC) results dashboard, which had recorded 50% of the votes in Cape Town with the DA at 62.27%, the ANC on 13.26% and new kid on the block, the Good party at 4.47%.
At the time of publication the IEC had not finalised the results for Cape Town but the DA has claimed victory on its own internal projections. DA leader John Steenhuisen said the projections show that the party has won about 58% of the metro vote. In the 25 municipalities (excluding district councils) in the Western Cape 16 were hung councils with the DA winning nine (Cape Town included) with an outright majority.
The DA also declared victory in uMngeni and in the Kouga municipality in the Eastern Cape. By Wednesday afternoon the DA had won 54.67% in uMngeni and the ANC 35.3% while in Kouga the DA received 54.99% of the votes, the ANC 36.23%, Patriotic Alliance 1.55%, FF Plus 3.25% and EFF 1.77%, prompting the Steenhuisen to declare victory.
Meanwhile, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on Wednesday afternoon projected the ANC would get 46.2% of the national vote while the DA and the EFF would get 21.8% and 10.5% respectively. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the CSIR projects the ANC’s support to total 39.4% while the DA would get 41.4% and the EFF 6.5%. The research group projects the ANC will retain control of Buffalo City with 61%.
In Gauteng metros, the CSIR projects the ANC will get 34.% in Joburg (49.6% in 2019), 38.4% in Ekurhuleni (52.7% in 2019) and 33.8% in Tshwane (46.1% in 2019).
In Cape Town, the DA is projected to retain control, with 57.4%, followed by the ANC at 19.3% and the GOOD party at 3.9%.
In eThekweni, the ANC is projected to get 42.2% support (59.1% in 2016 and 54.1% in 2019), with the DA getting 25.2%, the EFF 10.4% and the IFP 9.6%.
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