Johannesburg: South Africans angry at joblessness, inequality and power shortages have slashed support for the African National Congress (ANC) to 40% in last week’s election, ending three decades of dominance by the party that freed the country from apartheid.
A dramatically weakened mandate for the legacy party of Nelson Mandela, down from the 57.5% it got in the previous 2019 parliamentary election, means the ANC must share power with a rival in order to keep it in power- an unprecedented prospect. “We can talk to everybody and anybody,” Gwede Mantashe, the ANC chair and current mines and energy minister, told reporters in comments carried by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), dodging a question about who the party was discussing a possible coalition deal with.
According to the electoral commission, ANC won 159 out of 400 seats in the election. In the previous election in 2019, the party had won 230 seats.
ANC's main challenger, the pro-business, white-led Democratic Alliance, came second with 87 seats. A new party, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) - "spear of the nation" in the Zulu language, backed by former president Jacob Zuma, won 58 seats, while the radical left Economic Freedom Fighters, came fourth with 39 seats.
