ANC suffers setback in South African municipality elections

In Tshwane, the metropolitan area that includes Pretoria, Democratic Alliance won 43.1 percent of the vote over the ANC’s 41.2 per cent, according to final results in elections highlighting the declining popularity of the party that led the anti-apartheid struggle.

The loss of Pretoria comes on top of the ANC conceding defeat on Friday in Port Elizabeth, a key battleground of Wednesday’s municipal election. 

Defeat in Port Elizabeth by a margin of 46.7 to 40 percent was a humiliating blow for the ANC as the municipality is officially known as “Nelson Mandela Bay” in tribute to its past as a hotbed of anti-apartheid activism.

Since South Africa’s first all-race election in 1994, the African National Congress party has had widespread support on the strength of its successful fight against white-minority rule. But this time, it has been challenged by corruption scandals and a stagnant economy that has frustrated the urban middle class, while protests in poor communities demanding basics like electricity and water have been common.

“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 President Jacob Zuma’s recent claim that the ANC would rule “until Jesus comes back.” 

The ANC already has lost its first major black-majority municipality in this election, Nelson Mandela Bay, named for the ANC’s star and the country’s first black president.

The opposition Democratic Alliance, which has roots in the anti-apartheid movement and had a white party leader until last year, won Nelson Mandela Bay after fielding a white candidate for mayor.

The party already runs the country’s second largest city, Cape Town, the only major South African 

city where blacks are in the minority among white and mixed-race residents.

The party’s leader, 36-year-old Mmusi Maimane, had predicted victory in Tshwane. “For far too long, the ANC has governed South Africa with absolute impunity,” Maimane said. He said the idea that his party was a white one has been “completely shattered.” 

The Democratic Alliance angered the ANC last month by declaring that it was the only party that could realize Mandela’s dream of a “prosperous, united and non-racial South Africa.” 

Maimane immediately looked ahead to presidential elections. “The 2019 campaign starts now,” he said.

The ANC so far has received 53 per cent of votes across the country, its lowest percentage ever, with the Democratic Alliance getting 26 per cent. The results for the ANC could put pressure on the 74-year-old Zuma to leave office before his mandate ends in 2019, political analysts said.