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The three decades of political dominance of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa ended after it was announced that he had won just 40.2% of the vote in last week’s general election.
The ANC’s dramatic decline – the first time it has failed to win a majority since Nelson Mandela led it to victory in the first democratic elections in 1994 – will lead to a chaotic round of coalition talks, with all its potential partners on the hook in the face of difficulties.
With ballots from more than 99% of polling stations counted on Saturday afternoon, the ANC had 40% of the vote – a collapse of more than 17 percentage points from the 2019 national election. The pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) was on 21.7%, while uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), launched only in December by the country’s former president Jacob Zuma, surprised with 14.6%.
According to the constitution, the new parliament must meet within 14 days of the announcement of the results and elect a new president at that meeting.
Chronically high unemployment, power outages, high crime and deteriorating infrastructure have contributed to a gloomy national mood in the country, with many voters seeking to punish the party that Nelson Mandela brought to power in 1994 at the end of apartheid.
Julius Malema, a former ANC youth leader, said his far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party, which received 9.5 percent of the vote, would talk to all parties to form a coalition. The party’s demands include land expropriation without compensation, he said at a press conference at the election results centre.
MK leaders, who also support land seizures, have said they will not work with the ANC as long as it is led by the current president, Cyril Ramaphosa. Zuma, who led South Africa from 2009 to 2018, had a bitter feud with his successor after he was forced to resign as president.
Malema said this was not a problem for the EFF. “Ramaphosa is not our preferred cup of tea,” he said. “But he can’t be a deal breaker.”
Malema, however, had warm words for MK, who he said had won back the votes for Zuma that the EFF “captured” in 2019, when it secured 10.8% of the vote. “We are related,” he said.
ANC officials at the results center said Ramaphosa’s future was not being discussed. “No one has raised it in the ANC except journalists,” said Gwede Mantashe, the party’s president.
The minimum wage was among the ruling party’s policies that were not up for discussion in coalition discussions, he said.
“We talk to everyone. We’re just chatting,” said the ANC’s first deputy secretary-general, Nomvula Mokonyane, after walking across the results center to speak to EFF officials.
The ANC leadership will set the party’s red lines for coalition talks “at an appropriate time”, she said, declining to say when.
The DA is looking at a range of options, including a “full coalition”, a deal that includes provincial and city governments, a “confidence and supply” agreement with a minority ANC government and remaining in opposition, said Helen Zille, chair of the DA’s federal council.
First, she said, the DA will meet with other members of the Multiparty Charter, an alliance with 10 other smaller parties that failed to secure a majority, on Thursday night. “We’re not in the business of abandoning our allies at our convenience, so we’ll want to take them with us in whatever we do,” she said.
The Inkatha Freedom Party, which has 3.9% of the votes counted and, like MK, draws most of its support from the Zulu people, has been suggested by analysts as a possible coalition partner to win the ANC and EFF over a majority or to help fend off criticism of the ANC-DA deal. Many black South Africans believe that the DA supports the interests of white people, although Zille reiterated that the party is “multiracial”.
A spokesman for the electoral commission said the final results would be announced on Sunday evening after the challenges to the results were dealt with.
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