JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa moved closer to the reality of a national coalition government for the first time on Friday as partial election results put the Congress of the African Nation, in power, far short of a majority.
With more than half of the votes counted in the country’s nine provinces, the ANC received just under 42% of the national vote, according to early results as counting continued. This represented a huge drop from the 57.5% achieved in the last national elections in 2019, although the final results of Wednesday’s elections have not yet been announced.
The commission running the elections said they would be announced by Sunday, although they could happen earlier.
The count of more than 12,000 of the 23,000 polling stations raised the strong possibility that the The ANC would need a coalition partner form a government and re-elect President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final term. Frantic negotiations would likely begin behind closed doors.
The ANC still led the count and somehow had the most votes, as expected, with the main opposition, Democratic Alliance around 24%. It is widely expected that the ANC will continue to be the largest party and have the largest number of seats in Parliament.
The ANC has had a clear majority throughout all 30 years of South Africa’s democracy, since the party came to power in the 1994 elections that officially ended the apartheid system of white minority government, leading Nelson Mandela to become the country’s first black president. It has been the dominant political force and dropping below 50% would be a important change for Africa’s most advanced economy.
The ANC’s support has steadily declined from a high of almost 70% of the vote 20 years ago, while South Africa faces deep socio-economic problems, including widespread poverty and now one of the world’s worst unemployment rates at 32%. Poverty and unemployment disproportionately affect South Africa’s black majority, which represents 80% of the population and has been the core of the ANC’s support over the years.
While the inequalities of apartheid were always difficult to resolve, the ANC was also blamed by many for failures in basic government services, numerous government corruption scandals, and, most recently, an electrical crisis that led to rolling blackouts across the country of 62. millons of citizens. .
This election appears to be the turning point when more South Africans choose another party.
A projection by a government agency and the SABC, based on vote results, estimated on Friday that the ANC would end up with just over 40%, a drop of around 17% percentage points, which would be a surprising result in the context from South Africa.
The ANC has said little about its potential coalition partners, despite the issue dominating South African political analysis months before the elections.
The various parties – South Africa has at least four that could be considered major parties – can now “face the reality that they have to work together” to deal with the country’s main challenges, said Joleen Steyn-Kotze, a senior expert under investigation. on democracy at the South African Human Sciences Research Council.
Analysts say coalition negotiations will depend on the extent to which the ANC falls short of a majority in the final results, if indeed it remains below 50%. If you lack a majority, you can approach several smaller parties to surpass 50%. If you’re a little off – as was the case in recent results – you may have to work with one of the two main opposition parties, the centrist Democratic Alliance and the far-left economic freedom fighters. They have very different ideologies.
The Democratic Alliance already has a pre-election agreement with several other opposition parties, excluding the EFF, with the mission of completely removing the ANC from government. But this group of parties would have to significantly increase their vote share to be in a position to do so.
Democratic leader John Steenhuisen said on election day: “All bets are off in this election. We are moving towards a coalition country.”
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