Durban - The African National Congress has comfortably claimed Durban in the 2016 Local Government Elections with 56 percent of the vote.
While there was no real threat to the party’s hold on the eThekwini Metro Municipality, its share of the vote did fall from the 61 percent it took in 2011.
The Democratic Alliance made the most gains seeing its portion of the vote climb from 21 percent in the 2011 local government elections to almost 27 percent.
The ANC will still have the same number of seats in the eThekwini Metro Council, but that is primarily due to the fact that the number of seats in the council increased from 205 to 219.
While the ANC keeps 126 seats, the number of councillors that it will have in the municipality has increased to 61 from the 43 that it had prior to the election.
The EFF with its eight seats will be represented in the municipality for the first time while there will be four independents instead of the one that was there previously and the Inkatha Freedom Party has increased its tally by two.
The Minority Front which previously had eight seats and had claimed some five percent of the vote in the municipality was the big loser. In 2011 the party claimed 103 043 votes. On Wednesday the party was barely able to pick up 10 percent of that with 11 795 votes, leaving it with one seat in the municipality.
The ANC’s eThekwini Regional chairperson Zandile Gumede is now set to become mayor of the metro, replacing James Nxumalo.
African News Agency