After 54.9% of polling stations were counted, the party of the late Nelson Mandela received 42.1% of the vote, a drastic drop from the 57.5% of the vote it received in the last national elections in 2019.
Although it looked like the ANC would remain the largest political force, voters seem to have punished the former liberation movement for its years of decline.
The ANC had won every previous national election since the historic 1994 vote that ended white minority rule, but over the past decade South Africans have watched the economy stagnate, unemployment and poverty rise and infrastructure crumble, leading to regular power cuts.
The election results page on the electoral commission’s website, which had been updating seamlessly since counting began, was blank for about two hours early Friday morning due to a technical problem. Shortly after 0700 GMT, the data was displayed again.”The data in the data centre remains intact and the results have not been affected … The processing of the results continues unaffected,” the commission said in a statement.
By law, the electoral commission has seven days to announce the full provisional results, but election authorities have said they plan to announce them on Sunday.
COALITION OF THE RECENT COURT
The vote share of political parties determines the number of seats they receive in the National Assembly, which then elects the next president.
This could still be the leader of the ANC, incumbent President Cyril Ramaphosa. However, an embarrassing performance in the elections could lead to a leadership challenge.
ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday that the ANC still wanted to win a majority. “A coalition is not our plan, it is a consequence. We will deal with that consequence when it occurs,” he said.
Investors and the business community have expressed concern at the prospect of the ANC forming a coalition with the EFF, which calls for the confiscation of white-owned farms and the nationalisation of mines and banks, or with Zuma’s MK, which also talks of land confiscation.
Although the DA says it wants to topple the ruling party, its leader John Steenhuisen has not ruled out a partnership to prevent what he called a “doomsday coalition” with the ANC that would bring the EFF or MK into government.
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