South Africa woke up on Thursday to a familiar name on top of the count — and an unfamiliar feeling underneath it. With only a small slice of the vote tallied from Wednesday’s municipal elections, the African National Congress (ANC), the party that has governed South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994, held a narrow lead over its main rival, the Democratic Alliance (DA).
The Electoral Commission‘s early snapshot, reported by Reuters, put the ANC on about 32% with roughly 12% of votes counted, just ahead of the DA on about 30%. A separate tally of the commission’s data put the ANC at 34.5% and the DA at 31.6% on a slightly earlier, smaller sample of just under 312,000 ballots. The gap between the two counts is itself the story: at this stage, the numbers move every hour, and neither figure describes the country yet.
That warning matters more than the headline. Only a small share of voting districts had reported in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, the provinces that hold South Africa’s biggest cities, Johannesburg and Durban. No municipality’s result was complete. Twelve of 4,485 wards were settled. The early national percentages, in other words, are a photograph of the places that counted fastest, not a forecast of who will run South Africa’s towns and cities.
What the early returns do show is fragmentation. Behind the two big parties sat the Freedom Front Plus on about 5.9%, the Patriotic Alliance on 5.4%, and the Economic Freedom Fighters on 4.3% in the smaller sample, with the uMkhonto weSizwe party — the party of former president Jacob Zuma — on under 3%. If that shape holds, many councils will end up with no outright winner, and the real election will be the coalition talks that follow. We previewed this vote yesterday, when the ANC was already braced for its worst result since apartheid ended.
Those talks are where South African local politics now lives. The ANC went into this vote widely expected to lose ground nationally, punished by voters for high crime, corruption scandals, and failing basic services — water that does not run, electricity that cuts out. The DA, which runs Cape Town and several other major metros, campaigned as the competent alternative. Smaller parties, meanwhile, have learned that a few percentage points in the right council buys a seat at the negotiating table.
Why this matters beyond South Africa. Municipal elections decide who fixes the pipes, collects the rubbish and keeps the lights on in Africa’s most industrialised economy — and investors, neighbours and the country’s own creditors watch them as a health check on the ANC’s grip. A party that once won nearly 70% of the national vote now fights to stay above a third in the early count. That is not a collapse, not yet. It is a slow unwinding, and the question for the rest of the week is whether the final count confirms it or corrects it.
Counting continues, and the picture will change significantly before any council is called. Treat every number in this article as preliminary — because that is exactly what it is.
