South Africa’s (SA) African \u200bNational Congress (ANC) was dealt a stinging blow in last week’s municipal elections, near-complete \u200cresults showed this Sunday, weakening its hand in the coalition talks that will follow to form city governments.<\/p>\n
With 99% of votes counted, the ANC had 31% against 25% for its main rival, \u200bthe Democratic Alliance (DA). Former President Jacob Zuma’s party uMkhonto weSizwe had about \u200b10% of votes, putting it in third place, while the rest was \u2060split between hundreds of smaller parties.<\/p>\n
Final results are expected to be announced at \u200b6 p.m. (local time).<\/p>\n
The outcome marks a painful setback for the ANC, which has seen its \u200bvote share fall steadily in local elections over the last 15 years due largely to failures in basic services such as water and electricity.<\/p>\n
Since no party won more than 50% of votes \u200bin many cities including SA’s commercial hub Johannesburg, the ANC and DA will \u200bhave to team up, or hash it out with smaller parties to form majority municipal governments.<\/p>\n
ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula called the result “catastrophic” for the ANC but said the party would not go begging for positions when coalition talks begin soon.
\n“When the people tell us we have fallen short the honest answer is not to argue with \u200bthem but to \u200bgo home and put \u2060our house in order,” Mbalula said on Saturday.
\nParties will have 14 days to negotiate before city councils are formed.<\/p>\n
In Johannesburg, the \u200bpro-business DA led the count with about 35% of votes, \u200bcompared to \u206020% for the ANC.
\nThat could give DA veteran Helen Zille, who had campaigned on fixing potholes and leaking water pipes, a good chance of becoming mayor, depending on the coalition agreements \u2060reached.<\/p>\n
The \u200bDA said in a statement that it would initiate \u200bcoalition discussions with “political parties that share a commitment to clean and accountable government, rooting out corruption, service \u200bdelivery for all, the rule of law, and non-racialism”.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20480,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-50294","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula called the result \"catastrophic\" for the ANC but said the party would not go begging for positions when coalition talks begin soon.","published_date":"","news_description":"ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula called the result \"catastrophic\" for the ANC but said the party would not go begging for positions when coalition talks begin soon.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50296,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/50294\/revisions\/50296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=50294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}