South Africa’s liberation party, the governing African National Congress, has lost its parliamentary majority for the first time after a historic election blow.
With all ballots now counted, results showed that after thirty years of dominance, the ANC of Nelson Mandela had been punished at the polls, gaining around 40% of the vote, a sharp drop from 57% in 2019.
While the official declaration of results is expected Sunday evening, this means South Africa is set to enter a new era of coalition politics, said Professor David Everatt, from Johannesburg’s Wits School of Governance.
“It will be a good thing because although the ANC under Mandela and Mbeki started well, it ended under a terrible trough of corruption, state capture,” he said.
Analysts say it was that corruption, as well as high unemployment and general failure to do more to improve the lives of poor Black South Africans, that saw President Cyril Ramaphosa’s party humiliated in this election.
