Early South African vote results show ruling party losses

South Africa’s ruling party, surviving a wave of scandals, was clinging to its majority in early results from Wednesday’s local elections, but opposition parties were making inroads and threatening to capture key cities.

Zuma’s presidency has been plagued by corruption scandals, disenchanting many ANC voters.

The EFF looks set to displace the DA as the second-largest party in Limpopo province, but could also prove kingmaker in urban areas where the ANC and DA have fought themselves to a stalemate. Final election results were expected in the coming week. The DA also leads the tally in the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, which includes Port Elizabeth, with 56.8 percent compared with the ANC’s 33.9 percent.

Baleka told reporters that it would be wrong to suggest that the governing party had dropped the ball in the run-up to the elections.

“I’m in this shack because I can’t afford rent”, said Sibabalo Sibisi, who lives in Alexandra township, a shantytown near Sandton, Africa’s richest suburb in Johannesburg.

“We are into an era of coalition politics”.

The DA is expected to maintain control of Cape Town, the only big city not run by the ANC. The DA is a historically white-dominated movement hoping to expand support under its new black leader Mmusi Maimane.

“The ANC is an organisation in crisis”, said its firebrand leader Julius Malema on Tuesday.

The DA had 69 percent of the vote in Cape Town against the ANC’s 22 percent, with 77 percent of the votes in. The government, which had declared Wednesday a national holiday, said turnout was good.

Some Tshwane residents in one of the crucial battleground municipalities remain convinced the African National Congress (ANC) will retain control.

Twenty-two years after the end of apartheid, black people are now voting on issues and not on race.

“The DA has been gifted in a sense because you have an ANC that is imploding, but they will have to show that they can exploit it”, says Judith February, a governance expert.

February said a close result could open a period of “tricky and messy” coalition building.

“There is no metro that is a given at this point”, said ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe.

Some locals had said they would boycott the vote, protesting against a change in municipal boundaries which led to riots in May after residents said social services would suffer.

South Africa’s leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – contesting a local election for the first time since it was founded three years ago – acquired 21 seats across all councils nationally.

The rand currency and government bonds firmed on Thursday, boosted by the smooth running of the elections. The Economic Freedom Fighters stood at 6.6 percent.

Earlier this year, South Africa’s highest court said he had violated the constitution by ignoring an order to pay back some of the $27-million in state funds that were spent on his luxurious family home in Nkandla village.

In December, respect plummeted for Zuma after he fired Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene, replacing him with a little-known member of parliament, then recruited Pravin Gordhan for the job.