S. Africa deals ruling party a major blow
Support at lowest level after election losses in 2 big cities
JOHANNESBURG — The party of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s governing African National Congress, sustained on Saturday its biggest election blow since the end of apartheid, as many voters in municipal elections either didn’t vote or favored two black-led opposition parties.
The ANC’s support remained substantial, at around 54 percent of the vote 22 years after the nation’s first democratic election. But it lost to the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, in two major cities — Tshwane, where the seat of government, Pretoria, is located, and Nelson Mandela Bay on the south coast, where a white mayor, Athol Trollip, will govern for the DA.
The 54 percent tally was a major psychological blow for a party whose vote had never fallen below 60 percent in previous elections.
But it won a tight race for the country’s biggest city, Johannesburg, election authorities reported Saturday night.
In a sign of the ANC’s shock at the losses, the former anti-apartheid movement canceled its victory party at its election headquarters in Johannesburg on Saturday, according to local media.
The result puts the spotlight on South African President Jacob Zuma, criticized for passing off personal upgrades to his home as security expenses.
Scandals around Zuma came back to haunt him even as he praised a peaceful vote. As he spoke on national TV, four women stood up in front of him, silently facing the crowd and holding signs that appeared to refer to his acquittal for rape in 2006. Zuma didn’t appear to respond.
The ANC’s support in most rural areas held up and its support in Zuma’s stronghold of KwaZuluNatal increased. But its losses in urban areas may signal that the ANC’s hold over middle-class black voters and poor blacks in big urban townships may be waning. Over two decades after the end of apartheid, growth is sluggish and unemployment remains stubbornly high at nearly 27 percent, excluding those who have given up looking for work.
“Election after election, the ANC has hung on to its past glory and kept its place in the hearts of most South Africans. This time round, though, it’s not enough,” the Mail & Guardian newspaper said in an editorial. On social media, South Africans mocked Zuma’s recent claim that the ANC would rule “until Jesus comes back.”
Senior ANC figures said the government would go back to its base to find out why people turned away from the party.
“Once we go back, they will say, ‘Well, guys, we did not vote for you because we are not happy about this,’ and we will see how we change those things. That is what democracy is all about,” said Paul Mashatile, chairman of the ANC in Gauteng, the most populous province.
The Democratic Alliance was white-led until last year, a barrier to its performance in elections, but a young black leader, Mmusi Maimane, 36, took over last year after the resignation of Helen Zille. Under Zille, the party consolidated and won control of Cape Town, the country’s second-biggest city.
The alliance won nearly 27 percent of the vote nationally in the current municipal vote, while the radical left party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Julius Malema, won just over 8 percent, according to results announced Saturday by the Independent Electoral Commission.
The Tshwane result leaves Malema as the potential kingmaker, with the Democratic Alliance forced to seek coalition partners after falling short of the majority required to rule in its own right. In Tshwane, the alliance won 43.1 percent of the vote to the ANC’s 41.2 percent with the EFF gaining 11.7 percent.
Malema, who has called for nationalization of banks and government seizures of white farmland, has given conflicting signals on whether he would be willing to form a coalition with the DA or the ANC.
The DA’s victory in Nelson Mandela Bay gives the party the opportunity to prove its efficiency as a government in that region, something it has tried to do in Cape Town. Associated Press contributed.