The African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority in historic election results on Saturday, setting South Africa on a new political course for the first time since the end of its white-minority apartheid system three decades ago.
With more than 99% of the votes counted, the once-dominant ANC won just over 40% of the vote in Wednesday's election, far short of the majority it has held since the famous all-race referendum in 1994 that ended apartheid and installed Nelson Mandela's government.
While the final results are yet to be officially announced by the Independent Electoral Commission, the ANC failed to get past 50% and the era of a coalition government, another first for South Africa, is on the horizon.
The Election Commission said it would formally announce the results on Sunday.
Opposition parties hailed the result as a landmark for a country plagued by deep poverty and inequality, but the ANC remained the largest party.
But with approval ratings falling to unprecedented levels, the government will likely need to find a coalition partner to stay in power and re-elect President Cyril Ramaphosa to a second and final term. Parliament must meet within 14 days of the results being announced to elect a South African president.
“The way to save South Africa is to destroy the ANC's majority and we have done that,” said John Steenhausen, leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance.
Opposition Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema said the ANC's “right to be the sole ruling party” was over.
The road ahead will be complicated for Africa's most advanced economy, but a coalition government is not yet on the table – talks began with the three main opposition parties and a host of smaller ones in the running.
“We can speak to anyone and everyone,” ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe told state broadcaster SABC.
Mr. Steenhausen's Democratic Alliance won about 21% of the vote. New MK, led by former President Jacob Zuma, who turned his back on the ANC he once led, came in third with just over 14% of the vote in his first election. The Economic Freedom Fighters came in fourth with just over 9%.
More than 50 parties ran in the election, with many winning only a handful of seats, but the three main opposition parties appear to be the most likely candidates the ANC could approach.
Electoral Commission chairperson Mosotho Moyepiya said now was the time for everyone to remain calm and for “leaders to lead and voices of reason to continue to prevail”.
“This is a moment we have to manage,” he said.
Steenhausen said his party was open to talks with the ANC, as was Malema. MK said one of the conditions for any deal would be for Ramaphosa to be removed as ANC leader and president, highlighting the bitter political feud between Zuma, who resigned as South Africa's president in 2018 amid corruption allegations, and Ramaphosa, who succeeded him.
“We are ready to negotiate with the ANC but not with Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC,” MK party spokesperson Nlamulo Ndlela said.
MK and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters are calling for parts of the economy to be nationalised.
The centrist Democratic Alliance (DA) is seen as business-friendly, and analysts say a coalition government between the ANC and DA would be more welcoming to foreign investors.
The DA has long been the most vocal opposition party and does not share the ANC's pro-Russia, pro-China foreign policy. South Africa will chair the G20 group of developed and emerging market countries next year.
An ANC-DA coalition government would be “like a drunken marriage in Las Vegas. It would never work,” Gayton McKenzie, leader of the smaller Patriotic Alliance party, told South African media.
The DA says an ANC-MK-EFF agreement would be a “doomsday coalition” given that MK and the EFF are made up of former ANC cadres and will pursue the same failed policies.
Although the three opposition parties combined won more seats than the ANC, they are unlikely to work together: the DA could have reached a pre-election agreement with other smaller parties to form a coalition government.
In the face of all this, ordinary South Africans were not in a mood to celebrate, but rather realized that the political road ahead would be extremely difficult. The Daily Maverick ran a front-page story showing South Africans scratching their heads and asking, “What does this mean for our future?” Die Brugger ran a photo of the logos of around a dozen political parties being put through a meat grinder.
South Africa's opposition parties were united by one thing: something had to change in a country of 62 million people that is both the most developed in Africa and one of the most unequal in the world.
The official unemployment rate is 32 percent, poverty disproportionately affects black people, who make up 80 percent of the population and have long been the backbone of the ANC's support, and violent crime rates are shockingly high.
The ANC has also been blamed, and now is being punished, by voters for the failure of basic government services that have affected millions of poor people, leaving many without running water, electricity and adequate housing. More recently, the national electricity crisis that led to a nationwide blackout has infuriated the entire South African population.
The ANC's approval rating has been falling steadily for the past two decades, dropping between three and five percentage points with each election, but it's down 17 percentage points this time around from the 57.5% it won in 2019 – a startling result given the state of the country as a whole.
According to the Electoral Commission, around 28 million South Africans are registered to vote, with turnout expected to be around 60 percent.
On election day, people queued late into the cold winter nights and hours after the official polls closed, with some even queuing as early as 3 a.m. the following day. This shows that many people are keen to have their say, but it also reflects one of South Africa's endemic problems: power outages that plunged people into darkness, causing delays at some polling stations.
