For the first time in the country’s history, a coalition government will be formed in South Africa after the parliamentary elections.
With just under 52% of votes counted, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party had 41.93% of the total as of Friday morning, according to the National Electoral Commission (IEC).
The preliminary result marks a massive loss of around 15 percentage points for the ruling party, which won 57.5% of the vote in the last parliamentary election of 2019.
If the former party of anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela remains below the 50% threshold, as is now thought likely, it will have to form a coalition.
Over the past thirty years, since democracy began in 1994, the ANC has always won an absolute majority and governed alone the continent’s strongest economy.
In the preliminary results, the economically liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) stood at 23.43%, while the party founded just six months ago by former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), stands at 10.58%. The Marxist-influenced party Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) follows closely with 9.78%.
According to preliminary results, the ANC will also lose its absolute majority in the country’s economically strongest province, Gauteng, which also includes the capital Pretoria and economic center Johannesburg.
The ANC is also expected to fall below 50% in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home province.
The country’s second strongest province, the Western Cape, where Cape Town is located, has been governed by the DA for years. The preliminary results suggest that the country will retain its absolute majority there.
Members of 52 parties competed for the 400 seats in the National Assembly on May 29. The newly elected parliament must form a government and elect a president within fourteen days of the announcement of the final results.
The ANC’s historic election losses can be attributed to the government’s weak record. The country of 61 million currently faces an ailing economy, mass unemployment and struggling state-owned enterprises. There are regular power outages and there is a lot of crime and corruption.
