Cape Town - The ANC was on Friday on track for its worst electoral performance since coming to power two decades ago, having lost the key metropolitan area of Nelson Mandela Bay and support in other areas, reflecting rising anger over a stubbornly high jobless rate and a lack of basic services.
The IEC is expected to formally announce the final results on Saturday. While the ANC remained significantly ahead across the country, cementing its dominance in KwaZulu-Natal, 17 hung municipalities have emerged and the ruling party was likely to be forced into some difficult marriages of convenience with other parties.
There has been a major shift in the balance of power in the country's key Gauteng metros. In the Tshwane and Johannesburg battlegrounds, the ANC and the DA were neck-and-neck this morning, with opposition parties capitalising on voter disillusionment as the "aura of liberation" faded.
In the Western Cape, the ANC suffered a bruising election defeat, with not a single municipality left under its control.
While it appears to be shaken in some of the metros, the ANC remained significantly ahead across the country with an overall vote of 54.8 percent to the DA's 26.51 percent and EFF's 7.94 percent by Friday morning.
However, the ANC's support was down sharply from 62 percent in the 2011 municipal elections, suggesting voters are losing patience with President Jacob Zuma, who rattled investors in December by changing finance ministers twice in a week, sending the rand plummeting.
The ANC lost the Nelson Mandela Bay metro to the DA because it failed to get its supporters out to the polls.
This is according to ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu, who told Independent Media this morning that the ANC had conceded defeat to the DA in that metro and withdrawn its dispute with the IEC about possible ballot tampering.
According to Mthembu, the party had lost because the DA had managed to get its supporters to go out and vote.
"We looked at the nature of the dispute, and decided we should withdraw it and continue with our lives and accept that we have lost Nelson Mandela Bay. We are not happy about the turn-out in ANC strongholds; we did not manage to get our people and our voters to come out in their thousands and vote.
"That explains the phenomenon of Nelson Mandela Bay. We have more wards there but we still lost Nelson Mandela Bay to the DA," said Mthembu.
'People are disillusioned'
Political analyst Imraan Buccus said the DA had run an "incredible campaign", capitalising on the "corruption narrative".
"The DA realises people are disillusioned and that these are uncertain times on a global scale. The aura of liberation is fading and this may contribute to a steady decline of the ANC - the metros in Gauteng are evidence of this," he said
With victory for the DA all but confirmed in the City of Cape Town, the ANC has lost the Matzikama, Cederberg and Cape Agulhas municipalities to the DA. It also failed to secure an outright win in Hessequa, with 46 percent of the vote, and in Beaufort West, where the ANC and the DA both secured six seats each.
While the ANC's provincial executive was licking its wounds at the provincial results centre at Century City, mayoral candidate Xolani Sotashe was gracious in defeat. All was not lost for the party, he said. The ANC had increased the number of wards under its control in the city from 32 to 35 - snatching two from the DA and gaining control over one of the city's five new wards, Ward 114.
He said the ANC was pleased to have regained control over Ward 99 in Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha, which it lost to the DA in 2011, and Ward 88 in Philippi, which it lost in a by-election. But a bungle with the IEC"s new online registration of candidates meant that the party failed to contest wards in the City Bowl, much to the surprise of some voters.
Conceding defeat to the DA, ANC provincial secretary Faeiz Jacobs said: "We expected to do better, but we accept the results. There are lots of lessons to be learnt from these results. We expected to do better in the Western Cape, but there seems to be a national trend."
By daybreak, with 85 percent of the vote for the metro counted, it appeared as if for the first time since the formation of the unicity, Cape Town might become a two-party council. The DA looked set to break another own record with a possible two-thirds majority, while political upstarts the EFF had failed to rack up enough votes to secure their first seat in the council.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA was ahead with 46.65 percent this morning, followed by the ANC with 40.99 percent and 5.07 percent for the EFF.
The DA was also leading in Tshwane with 43.36 percent, the ANC coming behind with 42.03 percent and the EFF third at 10.6 percent.
Johannesburg also saw a narrow lead by the ANC, which was at 41.79 percent, while the DA was at 41.72 percent.
The EFF was at 10 percent, which would see them integral to any coalition to form an executive council if the numbers remained close to what they were at the time of publication. In Ekurhuleni, the ANC was leading the pack with 47.26 percent and was followed by the DA, at 36.2 percent, and the EFF, with 11.11 percent.
Across the country, the ANC remained significantly ahead with an overall vote of 54.8 percent. The DA and EFF had 26.51 percent and 7.94 percent respectively.
The ANC was leading the rest of the pack in terms of the number of seats won across the country, with 3 657 ward and PR seats, with the DA trailing with 1 070 seats. The EFF had 340 seats across the country, but had only managed to win five wards.
Cape Argus