With half of South Africa's municipal election ballots counted, the African National Congress sits at 31.75% of the national vote. That figure, confirmed by the Electoral Commission of South Africa, marks a drop of more than 13 percentage points on the party's previous worst-ever showing of 45.59% in the 2021 municipal elections. For a party that has held political dominance since the country's first democratic elections in 1994, the numbers are hard to ignore.
Voters across the country have made clear that frustration over poor service delivery, corruption, and slow economic growth is pushing them toward political alternatives. The Democratic Alliance appears to be a primary beneficiary, sitting at 26.33% with half the votes in, up from its 21.62% final tally in 2021. ActionSA, led by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, is also showing strong numbers and could play kingmaker in several major urban areas.
Former president Jacob Zuma's MK Party continues to draw considerable support in KwaZulu-Natal, reaching 7.86% of the national vote at the halfway mark. That kind of regional pull will matter when the coalition negotiations begin, and analysts say those talks are coming regardless of how the final count lands.
Perhaps the most symbolic storyline emerging from these results is Johannesburg. The country's most populous city and commercial heartbeat, which has cycled through a long series of mostly ANC mayors and years of urban decline, looks set to be claimed by the DA as its largest party. Whether that translates to meaningful change on the ground is the question South Africans will be watching closely.
Originally published by African Business.