South Africans have spoken

AS THE IEC prepares to sign off on election results today, there will be much for polit- icians to ponder. Certainly the ANC will need to do some serious introspection. Although the party is still by far the country’s biggest, controlling most councils in most provinces, except the Western Cape, it has bled support dramatically in the country’s metros and almost entirely lost any support it enjoyed from ethnic minorities. The DA has claimed victory in Cape Town and the Nelson Mandela Bay metro while in Tshwane and Johannesburg the country watched as the two protagonists remained neck and neck through much of the counting. At the polls voters showed their displeasure with the ANC’s failings in terms of leadership, corruption and service delivery. Some analysts are suggesting the ANC is be- coming a rural party, where an older generation, dependent on social grants, remains loyal. In a country that is rapidly urbanising and has a youth bulge, failure to capture the imagination of the younger generation must be a serious concern to ANC leaders. What is clear is the ANC cannot simply rely on old loyalties, a tame SABC, mumbo jumbo about ancestors and waving the race card. Former Mpumalanga premier and treasurer-general of the ANC, Mathews Phosa, a strong critic of President Jacob Zuma, says “the clever blacks” have spoken. He warned the ANC to act decisively on “the stink of corruption” if it is to rescue itself. ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa said the party would listen to what voters had said. Opposition parties will also have much to con- sider, including the DA which decisively won mu- nicipal governance in the Western Cape and needs to ensure delivery, particularly to the poor. The era of coalition politics has arrived and the DA and EFF face hard decisions.