Africa

South Africa’s ruling ANC loses majority for the first time in 30 years

African National Congress has 40.2 per cent of the vote, while former president Jacob Zuma’s new party garnered 14.9 per cent

President Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC lost its political monopoly after receiving only about 40 per cent of the vote. Photograph: Ilan Godfrey/The New York Times
President Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC lost its political monopoly after receiving only about 40 per cent of the vote. Photograph: Ilan Godfrey/The New York Times
Sun Jun 02 2024 - 08:17

South Africa’s election commission will be ready to announce the full results of this week’s election on Sunday, the commission’s chairman Mosotho Moepya said.

With almost 99 per cent of ballots cast in the May 29th election counted, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has 40.2 per cent of the vote. The ANC had 57.5 per cent in the 2019 elections.

Former South African president Jacob Zuma’s new party garnered 14.9 per cent just five months after its launch, making it the third-largest.

Mr Zuma reiterated his allegations about discrepancies in counting of votes even as election results showed that his new uMkhonto weSizwe Party had eaten into the support of the ANC.

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“Wrong things happened during counting,” he told reporters in Johannesburg on Saturday, without providing any evidence. Earlier, his party spokesman, Nhlamulo Ndhela, said the organisation was considering seeking a “revote”.

Mr Zuma, who led South Africa for almost nine scandal-ridden years before the ANC forced him from office, has said that his party wants a two-third majority. “Don’t interfere with us by bringing all the tricks,” Mr Zuma said.

South Africa’s electoral commission has denied any disparity in the count.

The ANC fell short of winning an absolute majority for the first time since vanquishing Africa’s last white-led regime 30 years ago.

With South Africans facing one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, shortages of electricity and water, and rampant crime, the governing party still bested its competitors but fell far from the nearly 58 per cent of the vote it won in the last election, in 2019.

The staggering nosedive for Africa’s oldest liberation movement put one of the continent’s most stable countries and its largest economy on to an uneasy and uncharted course.

The party, which rose to international acclaim on the shoulders of Nelson Mandela, will now have two weeks to cobble together a government by partnering with one or more rival parties that have derided it as corrupt and vowed never to form an alliance with it.

“I’m actually shocked,” said Maropene Ramokgopa, one of the top officials in the ANC. “It has opened our eyes to say: ‘Look, we are missing something, somewhere.’”

South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, who leads the ANC, faces a grave threat to his ambition of serving a second term.

He will be forced to summon the negotiating skills that famously helped him broker the end of apartheid, and pull together his highly factionalised party, which is likely to disagree on which party to ally with.

Detractors are expected lay the blame for this devastating tumble at Mr Ramaphosa’s feet and could try to replace him, possibly with his deputy, Paul Mashatile. – Agencies