South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has lost its absolute majority for the first time in three decades, the country’s electoral commission announced on Saturday following this week’s parliamentary polls.
With 97.51% of the votes counted, the ANC was at 40.11% on Saturday morning, the IEC election commission said. The preliminary partial result shows a huge loss of power for President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ruling party.
For the first time in the country’s history, the party, once led by anti-apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela, will have to form a coalition.
Over the past thirty years, since the dawn of democracy in 1994, the ANC has always enjoyed an absolute majority and single-handedly governed the continent’s strongest economy.
The economically liberal Democratic Alliance (DA) stood at 21.71%, according to preliminary partial results, while the party founded just six months ago by former President Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), stood at 14.84%. The Marxist-influenced Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party received 9.37% of the vote.
Political commentators largely attribute the ANC’s historic loss of power – almost 17 percentage points since the 2019 parliamentary elections – to the new creation of the Knesset parliament, while also pointing to the party’s weak track record.
The Southern African country of 61 million inhabitants suffers from a struggling economy, mass unemployment, dilapidated state-owned enterprises, regular power outages and high crime and corruption.
Members of 52 parties competed for parliament’s 400 seats in the May 29 elections. Once the results are announced, the newly elected parliament must form a government and elect a president within fourteen days. Provincial governments were also newly elected.
