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01-06-2024
PRETORIA: South African political parties geared up for coalition talks on Friday as the governing African National Congress (ANC) looked set to fall well short of a majority in this week’s election for the first time in 30 years of democracy.
With results in from 57.3 per cent of polling stations, the party of the late Nelson Mandela had 41.9 per cent of the votes, a precipitous drop from the 57.5 per cent it secured in the last national election in 2019.
While the ANC looked likely to remain the country’s largest political force, voters appear to have punished the former liberation movement for years of decline.
The ANC had won every previous national election since the historic 1994 vote that ended white minority rule, but over the last decade South Africans have watched the economy stagnate, unemployment and poverty climb and infrastructure crumble, leading to regular power outages.
Projections by South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research indicate the ANC will end up with about 40.5 per cent of the vote by the time the full results are in.
So far the pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) is in second place on 23.4 per cent. “I think it’s a very good day for South Africa,” DA leader John Steenhuisen said.
“We said for the last 30 years the way to rescue South Africa was to break the ANC majority. We’ve done that.”
U.Mkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a new party led by former president Jacob Zuma, is at 11.3 per cent after eating into ANC support, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home province.
MK appears to have overtaken the radical Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF), led by Julius Malema, which is currently the third-largest party in parliament but is sitting on 9.5 per cent.
The results page on the electoral commission’s website, which had been updating seamlessly since the start of the count, went blank for roughly two hours on Friday due to a technical problem. The data reappeared shortly after 5pm Friday AEST.
“The data in the data centre remains intact and the results have not been compromised … result processing continues unaffected,” the commission said in a statement.
By law, the election commission has seven days to release full provisional results, but election officials have said they are planning for a Sunday announcement.
Political parties’ share of the vote will determine the number of seats they get in the National Assembly, which then elects the next president.
That could still be the ANC’s leader, incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa. However, an embarrassing showing at the polls risks fueling a leadership challenge from within his party.
Though the DA says it wants to oust the ruling party, Steenhuisen has not ruled out a partnership to block what he has called a “doomsday coalition” with the ANC bringing the EFF or MK into government.
Investors and the business community have voiced concern over the prospect of such a coalition, given the EFF is calling for the seizure of white-owned farms and the nationalization of mines and banks, and Zuma’s MK also talks about land confiscation.
However, when asked if his party was in coalition talks on Friday, Steenhuisen simply said: “No.”
“We’ve got to wait for the results to end before we can start with any major discussions, but my first port of call is going to be with my Multi-Party Charter conference,” he said, referring to an alliance of opposition parties formed before the election that does not include MK or the EFF. (Int’l News Desk)
