The votes have been counted, and the African National Congress has received what its own secretary-general is calling a "catastrophic" result, the worst the party has ever recorded in a South African general election.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is urging the country to accept what happened at the polls. His message is clear: the people have spoken, and that verdict must be respected.
The gap between those two responses, one from the man at the top and one from the party's own machinery, tells you everything about where the ANC stands right now. A movement that once defined post-apartheid South Africa is now being forced to reckon with a public that has fundamentally changed its mind.
What comes next for the ANC, and for the country, is the question everyone is sitting with.
Originally published by BBC Africa.