South Africa’s ANC Suffers Worst-Ever Election Result as Voters Deliver Historic Rebuke
South Africa’s governing African National Congress has suffered the worst election result in its history, winning just 30.76 per cent of the vote in municipal elections held last Wednesday, according to final results declared by the country’s electoral commission on Sunday evening.
The result, announced by Electoral Commission chairperson Mosotho Moepya at the National Results Operations Centre in Midrand, confirms a historic collapse for the party that has dominated South African politics since Nelson Mandela led it to power in the country’s first democratic elections in 1994.
It is the ANC’s lowest showing in any election since the end of apartheid — down from 45.59 per cent in the 2021 municipal elections, 40.2 per cent in the 2024 general election, and a peak of 64.82 per cent in the 2006 municipal vote.
A party that once won two-thirds of the vote
The scale of the decline is stark. Twenty years ago, the ANC won almost two out of every three municipal votes. On Sunday, it went into the final declaration with fewer than one in three.
Voter turnout reached 52 per cent, six points higher than in the pandemic-affected 2021 elections, with about 14.9 million of South Africa’s 29.2 million registered voters casting ballots. The higher turnout did not help the governing party: voters punished it over failing water and electricity supplies, collapsing municipal services, corruption and unemployment running at about 34 per cent.
ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula described the outcome as “catastrophic”, acknowledging that the party had lost support among middle-class voters. He insisted, however, that the ANC would not “go begging” for positions when coalition talks begin.
No outright majority in any major city
The ANC failed to win an outright majority in any of South Africa’s eight metropolitan municipalities. It controls just 53 of the country’s 213 councils outright, and 135 councils are now hung — more than double the 66 hung councils after the 2021 elections.
The party won the most votes in only two of the eight major cities — Buffalo City, with 42.02 per cent, and Mangaung, with 33.91 per cent — and secured an outright majority in only one of South Africa’s nine provinces, Limpopo, down from six in 2021.
Its main rival, the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), finished second nationally with 24.64 per cent and leads in five of the eight metros. In Johannesburg, South Africa’s commercial hub, the DA won about 35 per cent against roughly 20 per cent for the ANC. The DA also secured the only outright metro majority, in Cape Town.
Former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party placed third with 9.76 per cent in its first municipal election, emerging as the largest party in eThekwini, the Durban metro, with about 38.3 per cent of the vote. The Economic Freedom Fighters took 6.22 per cent.
Fourteen days to build coalitions
Parties now face a 14-day statutory deadline to negotiate governing coalitions and elect mayors before newly formed councils convene. The talks will be among the most complex in South Africa’s democratic history, with more than half of all councils lacking an outright winner.
Johannesburg presents one of the biggest tests. The DA, led there by 75-year-old veteran politician Helen Zille, is best placed to lead the city government, but will need partners. In Tshwane, the Pretoria metro, the ANC fell to about 20 per cent, while in eThekwini the MK party’s surge has upended a region the ANC once controlled comfortably.
The result also weakens the ANC’s hand nationally. It lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in the 2024 general election and now governs in a national unity coalition with the DA and other parties. Sunday’s result deepens the questions facing President Cyril Ramaphosa, who had not publicly addressed the outcome as of Saturday evening.
A verdict on services — and a warning for Washington
For voters, the election was above all a verdict on daily life: taps that run dry, power cuts, potholes and refuse uncollected. Political analyst Susan Booysen said the results reflected a broader rejection of the ANC’s performance at municipal and provincial level.
The outcome also lands at a sensitive moment in South Africa’s relations with the United States. Washington is set to cut South Africa from the AGOA duty-free trade programme from 1 January, a move that will hit exporters just as the country’s politics fragment further.
The ANC remains the largest party in the country, with the most council seats of any party — 3,236, down from 4,545 in 2021. But the era in which it could govern alone, at almost every level, is over. The coalition era that began nationally in 2024 has now arrived in South Africa’s town halls too.
Whether the party can rebuild from 30.76 per cent — or whether Sunday marks the point of no return — will be decided first in the coalition talks of the next fortnight, and then at the ANC’s next elective conference, scheduled for December 2027.
