Johannesburg - ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule has hit back at the party’s elections head Fikile Mbalula for saying it would have scored less than 40% of the votes if President Cyril Ramaphosa was not elected in 2017.
Addressing the media at the Independent Electoral Commission’s (IEC's) national results operations centre on Friday, Magashule described Mbalula’s utterances as nonsense.
”That’s nonsense, people are electing the ANC. It’s not about any individual. How do you predict that? Is Comrade Mbalula saying I was not going to be part of the campaign if the leader was somebody else?” Magashule asked.
He said people were voting the ANC and not individuals.
On Thursday, Mbalula said if the results at the ANC’s national conference in Nasrec in Johannesburg in December had been different and former AU Commission chairperson Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma replaced former president Jacob Zuma the party would have sunk to 40%.
On Friday afternoon, with over 90% of the 22 925 voting districts across the country, the ANC’s electoral support stood at 57.38%, followed by the DA at just over 21% and the EFF at 10.33%.
Magashule said the ANC’s likely decline in Wednesday’s elections showed that South Africa was a true democracy as there were 48 parties contesting the polls.