ANC’s potential loss of majority signals political shift

In the absence of a major surprise, the African National Congress (ANC) will have to admit that it has lost its outright majority in the National Assembly. More than 40% of the votes have been counted, representing a significant sample size of what to expect from the overall results.

As expected according to recent opinion polls, support for the ANC has dropped below 50%, to around 43%.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has done better, with its support increasing to around 25%, while the new uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) won big support in KwaZulu-Natal – translating to close to 10% of total votes in SA.

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It looks like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has lost a bit of its support to MKP. Based on the count thus far, the EFF has seen its slice of the vote fall from around 11% in the 2019 elections to less than 9%.

Several opinion polls ahead of the elections predicted that the ANC would continue to lose support, as it has in every election since the high point in 2004 when the ANC secured nearly 70% of the votes.

In essence, bad government started to catch up with the ruling party in the 2014 elections when its support dropped to below 60% for the first time since it came to power in 1994, falling to 57.5%.

In contrast, support for the Democratic Alliance (DA) has grown steadily during the past decade or so. In 1999, the DA (then the Democratic Party or DP) won 9.6% of the votes, which increased to 12.4% in 2004 and 16.7% in 2009.

In 2014 the DA got 22.2% of the votes and in 2019 21%, with its largest support base in the Western Cape.

National Assembly

Currently, based on the previous election, the ANC has 230 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, the DA holds 84 and the EFF 44. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) got 3.5% of the vote in the previous elections and earned 14 seats in parliament.

Smaller parties share the rest, notably the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) with 10 seats and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) with four. Good and Congress of the People (Cope) each have two seats.

That the ANC will probably lose its outright majority at the national level will necessitate big changes in parliament.

A lot of the ANC’s current members of parliament will have to vacate their seats and offices – losing their jobs. Their support staff also face uncertainty.

The changes don’t stop there. For years the ANC has been able to use its majority to appoint senior staff at all levels of government and within government departments, state-owned companies and several other state entities.

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Now, a coalition with another political party is on the cards.

This means members of the coalition party will not only sit in parliament, but will have the negotiating power to push for senior posts for its members throughout the huge machine that we know as the civil service.

Provincial

Provincial results are also coming in as expected. The ANC is set to perform well in Limpopo (66% after counting 20% of the votes), North West (62%) and Eastern Cape (61%). It did a bit worse in the Free State (54%) and Mpumalanga (53%).

There has been a big shift in Gauteng with support for the ANC falling to less than 36%, but this is subject to change as millions of votes still to be counted could change the picture drastically.

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Provisional results show that MKP garnered a lot of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal – a massive 45% – with ANC support in the second biggest province in SA falling to 21%.

The IFP, traditionally the biggest party in KwaZulu-Natal after the ANC, has secured 18% of the votes so far.

The ACDP and FF+ will end up with enough votes in most of the provinces to secure a few seats and representation.

Smaller parties

The new Patriotic Alliance won good support in the Western Cape, taking 11% of the vote (with 22% of the votes counted). It seems to have had success where previous parties like Cope and Good failed in the past.

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Other small parties have done surprisingly poorly.

The leaders, candidates and members of most of the smaller new parties are probably disappointed as it looks like they will only win a few thousand votes each. The majority will get no representation in parliament, regional government, or provincial government.

Investors

The election outcome is bad news for businesses, investors and the economy in general. Election 2024 has brought a lot of uncertainty – the most important being which political parties will join forces to form a new governing coalition.

Coalitions are difficult, and the two larger parties (EFF and MK) were founded by previous ANC supporters who touted more radical and socialist policies.

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The relief rally on the JSE, predicted by some fund managers and analysts, has not happened. The rally was supposed to lift shares from their low levels, but the JSE lost nearly 2% instead.

The rand declined to nearly R18.60 against the dollar and R20.13 against the euro. The bond market also weakened, with yields increasing slightly to maintain the recent higher levels.

This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here