OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday
WITH 9,8 million votes counted in South Africa’s key local government elections, the ruling African National Congress has wrested control of 46 local councils, with the Democratic Alliance taking 18 as it made major inroads into ANC’s support base.
Early on Wednesday afternoon the ANC had captured 58% of the popular vote to the DA’s 31%. However, voter turnout was a disappointing 48%, ranging from about 40% in the Northern Province and 62% in the Western Cape.
No official results had been released for the new unicities – East Rand, Johannesburg, Tshwane, Durban, Cape Town or the Mandela metro in the Eastern Cape.
Provisional results suggest that the ANC is set to take the East Rand. With 61 of the 88 council seats counted, the ANC was leading the DA by 56% to 31%.
The ANC also looked set to win Johannesburg, having captured 58,91% of the vote to the DA’s 34% with 103 of the city’s 109 wards counted.
In Cape Town, with 40% of vote counting completed, the DA had garnered 61,67% of the vote compared to the ANC’s 29,65%.
In Katlehong on the East Rand, where six voters were shot dead in an attack at a polling station in Mandela Park, provisional results suggested that the ANC had captured 94,38% of the vote. The United Democratic Movement had 1,21% and the DA 1,98%.
Richard Calland, a political analyst at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa, said that from preliminary results it appeared the DA had done well in traditionally coloured areas.
If that trend continued, there would be a decisive victory for the DA in the Western Cape, he said, according to an Independent Electoral Commission statement.
Officials said the polling was generally trouble-free, although gunmen shot six people dead in a squatter camp near Johannesburg during voting, and some parties charged voting irregularities in some centres.
The ANC claimed that one person voted 14 times at a polling station in eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, and at least four polling officials were suspended around the country.
President Thabo Mbeki congratulated political parties for “making sure that today we will indeed produce a free and fair election.”
“Whoever has won, whatever the odds … it is a victory for the democratic system in the interests of all of our people,” he said. – AFP