ANC on course to lose majority after ‘watershed’ South African election

The African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s liberation party that rose to power as apartheid ended 30 years ago, was on course to lose its outright majority for the first time since the start of multi-party elections in South Africa.

With almost 50 per cent of the votes from Wednesday’s general election counted, the ANC was on 42.9 per cent, ahead of the economically centrist Democratic Alliance at 23.4 per cent, Jacob Zuma’s new uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party on 10.2 per cent, and the radical Economic Freedom Fighters at 9.5 per cent. The ANC will almost certainly need to seek coalition partners in order to govern if this result holds. 

A model of predicted outcomes from South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research put the ANC’s final projected vote at 41 per cent. This is a sharp fall from the 57.5 per cent it achieved in 2019 and raises questions over the future of President Cyril Ramaphosa and which groups his party would work with to stay in power. 

Analysts described the loss of the ANC’s majority as an indictment of its economic governance over the past decade. Inequality has soared to the worst in the world, more than one-in-three remain unemployed, and frequent electricity blackouts have ensured GDP growth has remained below 1 per cent.

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Frans Cronje, a political analyst, said the results showed that the era of ANC dominance was over. “It’s the most unnecessary political defeat. Had they focused on lifting growth beyond 2 per cent and creating jobs . . . rather than pushing populist measures like expropriation, they’d have retained their majority,” he said. 

Ebrahim Fakir, an analyst with the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy, concurred that the vote marked a watershed. “The era of substantive uncertainty is definitely here,” he said of the political system that appears to be fragmenting, with South Africa entering a new age of coalition politics. The national ballot featured more than 50 parties, in addition to almost a dozen independent candidates.

The new electoral system, which needs three separate ballots, had only been finalised a year ago, and voters complained of long queues on Wednesday, with some waiting at polling stations until late into the night to vote.

The rand fell more than 1 per cent to R18.76 to the dollar as South Africa’s investment markets digested news of the ANC’s likely tally.

Goolam Ballim, chief economist at Standard Bank, said investors had expected that the ANC would be able to cobble together a relatively benign coalition with the likes of the Inkatha Freedom Party, which would have been less likely to have wrung heavy policy concessions out of the governing party.

But the projections that the ANC could drop below 45 per cent made more likely a pact with “more leftist-leaning and ethically-questionable parties”, he added. This included Julius Malema’s EFF, which campaigned on a platform of nationalising mines and expropriating land from the wealthy. Another radical party, the MK party, launched six months ago by former president Jacob Zuma, took a large number of votes from the ANC in Wednesday’s election.

MK was leading in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa’s second-most populous province, with 43 per cent. The ANC won a majority in KwaZulu-Natal in the 2019 election, but was tracking at only 20 per cent by late Thursday.

The ANC also looked set to lose its majority in Gauteng, South Africa’s economic heartland, encompassing Johannesburg and the capital Tshwane, formerly Pretoria. The ANC led with 33 per cent in Gauteng, marginally ahead of the DA with 30.2 per cent.

But as results trickled in on Thursday, the ANC refused to concede it had lost its majority. Gwede Mantashe, ANC chair and member of Ramaphosa’s cabinet, told the media “the results will determine whether we need a coalition or not . . . We want an outright majority.” 

Helen Zille, DA chair, said it was inevitable the ANC would fall below 50 per cent. “Every poll predicted it, so the markets shouldn’t be too spooked by that at all. The critical thing is what kind of coalition will take the place of an ANC overall majority,” she told reporters at the Electoral Commission’s results centre.

Zille predicted that, having lost its majority, the ANC “will never” get more than 50 per cent again.

Ralph Mathekga, an independent analyst, said that, given the problems facing South Africa, its political system would have been broken were the ANC to have come out of this election unscathed. 

“What we saw was angry voters coming out to voice their dissatisfaction, which outnumbered those who came out to defend the ANC,” he said.