Johannesburg – The decline in the ANC votes at this year’s local government elections is a message for the governing party to shape up.
This is according to ANC deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte, who conceded that the low voter turnout was indicative that people were disappointed in the ruling party.
Duarte, who was flanked by ANC elections head Fikile Mbalula and the party’s treasurer general Paul Mashatile, said the organisation has heard the concerns of the people.
“2021 local government elections have been amongst the most difficult elections we have contested as the ANC.
“It is raising alarm for the ANC that the low voter turnout, especially from the ANC’s traditional strongholds, communicated clear message that people are disappointed in the ANC with slow progress in ensuring consistency in providing basic service delivery and tackling corruption,” she said.
“The ANC heard the message loud and clear,” she added, speaking at the Independent Electoral Commission’s National Results Operations Centre in Pretoria.
Her comments came as the IEC announced that counting of the elections was over and that the electoral body was on course to declare the elections tomorrow.
With 96% of the capturing of the votes done, the ANC was well below the psychological 50% of the national votes – for the first time since 1994.
As of 17h00, the party stood at 46% – which represented a decline of 8% compared to the last local elections.
In 2016, the ruling party scored 53,9% nationally. It was during these watershed elections that the party lost control of key municipalities, including Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay and was forced into a coalition in Ekurhuleni.
Indications were that this year’s elections were going to produce more hung municipalities, where the ANC is facing two possibilities: lose metros to DA-led coalitions as was the case in 2016 or enter into deals with the EFF, or even the DA.
More metros beyond the Eastern Cape (Nelson Mandela Bay) and Gauteng (Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg) looked set for coalitions (KwaZulu Natal’s eThekwini).
Julius Malema’s party has made it clear that it wanted to share governing of municipalities with its coalition partners instead of sharing power inside the councils.
The ANC would on Friday convene an extended meeting of its national working committee (NWC) to thrash out conditions under which they would enter coalitions, and with which parties will the co-govern with.
Mashatile said his party was not going to enter into coalitions at all costs, adding they were prepared to be opposition in some councils.
“We are carefully considering how we are going and who to work with in pursing coalitions in some parts of municipalities. We are keen to work with those who want to pursue the agenda of delivering services to our citizens,” he said.
“We have done multiple coalitions before, we will be able to work with those parties who agree with our agenda, however, we are not desperate for coalitions. Those who say no to the ANC we will not chase them,” he said.
Mbalula said the worst could have happened in these elections, arguing that the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa saved the day for the party.
“We went to this campaign knowing that the biggest enemy we are facing is to get our people out to vote. We had to convince our people to vote for us, and in this process of this trail we were confronted with a host of grievances from our people in terms of service delivery,” he said.
“Another thing that negatively affected us is the issue of electricity. The pandemic also affected the voting results and the day selected also contributed to the decline of the voters. The president led from the front, and we knew that he is our biggest asset,” he added.
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