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) is at 23.43%, while the party founded just six months ago by former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), is 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.
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.
