South Africa's African National Congress is headed for a heavy loss in this week's municipal elections, holding just 31.8% of the national vote with more than 80% of ballots tallied. That is nearly 14 points below the party's showing in the 2021 local polls.
The ANC, which has governed the country since apartheid ended in 1994, is projected to lose first place in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the two most populous provinces. Final results are due Sunday.
The Democratic Alliance, a center-right party with white leadership, stood at 24.1%. The uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party of former ANC president Jacob Zuma had 9.3%.
More people voted this time. The election commission estimated turnout at 54.5% of registered voters, compared with 46% five years earlier.
Joblessness, crime, graft and weak municipal services have all pushed voters away from the former liberation movement.
Johannesburg up for grabs
Johannesburg, the country's largest city and commercial hub with 4.8 million residents, has gone through 10 mayors in a decade as fragile coalitions collapsed. The city acknowledges a 220 billion rand infrastructure backlog, and residents deal with recurring water and electricity outages, uncollected trash and potholed roads.
With just over half the Johannesburg count in, the DA led with 40% after a vigorous push headed by Helen Zille, 75, who once ran Cape Town as its mayor. The ANC, now at the head of the city's governing coalition, trailed at 17.5%, narrowly ahead of Herman Mashaba's right-wing ActionSA at 15.5%.
Mashaba has vowed he will never partner with Zille and labels her racist, a charge she strongly rejects. Many ANC township strongholds had not yet fully reported.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, a respected think tank, projects final figures of 34% for the DA, 20% for the ANC and 16.8% for ActionSA. The DA is ahead in all three of Gauteng's metropolitan municipalities, whose coalitions are often bargained as a package.
Zuma's party surges in KwaZulu-Natal
In KwaZulu-Natal, MK is expected to overtake the ANC as the biggest party. Founded in 2023 and led by the 84-year-old Zuma, who denies numerous corruption allegations, it combines socially conservative Zulu nationalism with promises to shift land and wealth from white to black South Africans.
Yet in eThekwini, the municipality that includes Durban, MK had 41% with half the votes counted, short of a majority and leaving room for rivals to band together and lock it out of power.
Elsewhere, the DA is projected to hold its majority in Cape Town despite rising middle-class frustration over housing costs.
Coalition talks have already begun in private, with leading figures signaling openness to nearly any partner while guarding their bargaining plans. Voters pick a ward council member and a party, seats are divided proportionally, and new councils then have two weeks to choose mayors and form governments.
