The ANC is getting hammered
South Africa’s early 2026 municipal election results on Thursday showed the African National Congress (ANC) is experiencing a sharp decline in vote share.
This, Reuters reported, could turn into a nightmare scenario for the party which has dominated South Africa’s elections since 1994.
With 28% of votes counted, the ANC had about 32% of the vote, narrowly ahead of the Democratic Alliance (DA) on 28%, results from the election commission showed.
Vote tallying was still in the early stages, and the outcome could change significantly as more voting stations report their numbers.
However, if those figures hold, the ANC would be down about 14 percentage points from its 2021 municipal election result, which was already its worst in history.
The ANC has tended to perform worse in municipal elections than at the national level and has acknowledged its failures in local governance.
Despite that, a dramatic loss could open up the field to more competition in the next national elections in 2029.
It will open the door for the pro-business Democratic Alliance to become South Africa’s largest party by 2029.
ANC will experience a big decline
A projection by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) suggested the ANC could end up with the same percentage of votes in the final tally as it has now.
It should not come as a surprise. Experts predicted that the ANC would lose ground as voters punish it for high crime rates, corruption scandals, and failures in basic services.
“The ANC is performing worse than expected, and expectations were already low,” said Louw Nel, senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa.
Nel argued that an outcome of 32% of the national vote in the 2026 local government elections would be the ANC’s “worst nightmare coming true.”
The DA was performing strongly in several major cities, including Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay.
In KwaZulu-Natal province, both former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party and the Inkatha Freedom Party were ahead of the ANC.
“It’s still early days, and you can’t really call the outcome. But I think we will do well and I am very excited,” said the DA’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille.
ANC Chairperson Gwede Mantashe remained optimistic, telling journalists that the current trends in results were not final.
“We may improve. Major areas, townships, and other areas have not been counted yet,” Mantashe said.
Coalition talks to follow the 2026 local government elections
Winning Johannesburg would be a major boost for the Democratic Alliance, which already controls Cape Town.
However, Johannesburg is among several key municipalities where no party is expected to get an outright majority.
This means that parties will have to negotiate to form coalition governments. They will have two weeks from the declaration of results to do so.
Analysts have said that the best option for stability in cities such as Johannesburg would be for the ANC to partner with the DA.
Such local government coalitions would mirror the arrangement in the Government of National Unity (GNU).
One stumbling block may be that the two parties are ideologically opposed on key issues such as racial redress.
The ANC could also decide to team up with the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters and Zuma’s party, uMkhonto weSizwe, cutting out the DA.
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Perhaps 25 years too late.
I agree, it is incredible someone, like 1 in 3 people think the ANC deserve anything…. mind blowing.
I see the 9% red party is getting smaller..smalller too. LOL