ANC's 30% local vote share rattles investors

Just over 30% of the vote. That is the near-final tally for South Africa’s ruling African National Congress in municipal elections, released Saturday by the Electoral Commission after 98% of ballots had been counted. The figure marks the movement’s weakest showing in its history, and it carries immediate consequences for how power will be distributed and exercised across the country’s most economically important cities.

The ANC lost its absolute majority in six of South Africa’s eight metropolitan regions, leaving the party that has dominated national politics since 1994 dependent on coalition-building where it governs at all. For investors and market watchers, the composition of those municipal alliances matters: the metro areas are the engines of the economy, and who runs them shapes procurement, service delivery, and the operating environment for businesses and households alike.

The economics of voter anger are central to the result. Water and electricity shortages, failing municipalities, high unemployment, and crime all weighed on the vote, with corruption and mismanagement widely cited as sources of disillusionment. Smaller parties have steadily chipped away at the ANC’s base, a fragmentation of the political market that has now compounded across three successive electoral cycles.

The Democratic Alliance, a pro-business, center-right party, appears as the runner-up at 24% of the vote. The DA won an absolute majority to retain control of Cape Town, performed strongly in the capital Pretoria and the economic hub of Johannesburg, and is expected to assemble coalitions that exclude the ANC. DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis told reporters that “all of the cut and thrust that comes with the election is now over, and it is time now… to put together governments that can actually fix these towns and cities.” He added that the party had reached out to many parties over the previous 24 hours and would continue doing so.

The numbers chart a consistent downward trajectory. The ANC took 46% at the last municipal elections in 2021, then just over 40% in the 2024 national polls, when it lost its outright parliamentary majority for the first time in the democratic era and responded by forming a cross-party national unity government with all parties represented in parliament, which remains in power.

Party leadership has publicly acknowledged the damage. Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula described the outcome as “very catastrophic” for the movement, even though the ANC remains the largest party by overall vote share. “We cannot ask the people to trust us merely because of our history,” he said, adding that the party needed to work on winning back public confidence. ANC leader and President Cyril Ramaphosa had not addressed the result as of Saturday evening, though earlier in the week he conceded in his weekly presidential letter that “municipal failures have contributed to declining public trust and confidence in democratic governance.”

Analysts frame the result as a governance and credibility problem with national implications. “It’s the ANC’s worst result in history,” political analyst Daniel Silke told the AFP news agency, calling it “the most severe result that the ANC would have feared.” He noted the outcome will undermine the party’s authority at both local and national levels and could serve as a bellwether of voter sentiment ahead of the 2029 general elections.

The party once led by Nelson Mandela and credited with ending apartheid took power in 1994 when South Africa became a democracy, but its decline over the past decade has been persistent. Attention now turns to complex municipal coalition negotiations, and to whether the ANC’s standing in the political marketplace can stabilize before the next national contest. Further context is available from DW’s original report at https://www.dw.com/en/south-africas-anc-facing-worst-ever-performance-in-local-elections/a-79887482.