WITH a third of the votes counted, South Africa’s ruling ANC is on course to win another general election but lose its 30-year-old outright majority, partial results showed Thursday.
According to the Independent Electoral Commission, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress has won 42.19 percent of the votes, with 7,658 districts out of 23,293 reporting.
This would leave it the largest single party in the National Assembly but, crucially, without the absolute majority it has won in every previous national vote since the advent of democracy in 1994.
With a third of votes in Wednesday’s election tallied, the ANC was leading but with a score of only 42 percent — well below the 57 percent it won in 2019.
Followed by the centre-right Democratic Alliance (DA) on 25 percent. The leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and former South African president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) were neck and neck on around nine percent each.
The final results are expected in the next three days.
“The broad church of the ANC has taken a substantial knock. This is a shock to the system for the ANC and ultimately will also be a shock to the system for the average South African, who has only known ANC rule since 1994,” said political analyst Daniel Silke.
“It redraws the political boundaries of South Africa and creates a degree of uncertainty”.
If President Cyril Ramaphosa’s party is confirmed as dropping below 50 percent, it would force him to seek coalition partners to be re-elected to form a new government.
That would be a historic evolution in the country’s democratic journey, which was underlined by newspaper headlines on Thursday.
“SA on the cusp of shift in politics,” read the front page of daily BusinessDay. “The people have spoken,” headlined The Citizen.
