ANC on way to clinch two-thirds majority

The African National Congress (ANC) has slightly increased its lead over opposition parties in the national election and currently stands on 63,2% with three million votes counted.

The ruling party broke through the 60% ceiling early on Thursday morning and was set to achieve a two-thirds majority in the country’s fourth democratic election.

At 8am the Democratic Alliance (DA) was in second place with 19,92% (584 822 votes) and the Congress of the People (Cope) third with 7,73% of the vote (226 755).

Smaller opposition parties were still lagging behind with the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) on 2,7%, the Independent Democrats (ID) on 1,7% and the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) on 1,2%.

Votes were still trickling into the national results centre in Pretoria and a voter turnout of more than 70% was expected. With 23-million South Africans registered to vote, this meant that almost 20% of votes had been counted by 8am.

The DA was still leading the closely watched race in the Western Cape with 53,8% (304 409 votes) against the ANC’s 26,8% (151 847 votes).

While some experts reckoned that Cope would give the DA a serious challenge for the position of official opposition, it is already clear that that is not going to happen.

Juli Killian, speaking for Cope at the Independent Electoral Commission’s results centre in Pretoria, said that it was never Cope’s idea that it would become the official opposition anyway.

She pointed out that the party had had very little time to organise — just 129 days from its launch to election day, and had been bitterly strapped for cash.

‘We were also short of money,” she said. ‘We hit the recession, and business people were reluctant to cough up. Many of those who thought about it were threatened.”

Of the Western Cape, the DA’s chief executive Ryan Coetzee said on Thursday morning that ‘the allocation of fractions of votes may give us 21 seats [which is half of the 42 seats in the legislature]. Or it may not.”

Things were not so hopeful, however, in the Northern Cape, in which the DA also allowed itself to have expectations.

The early results gave the ANC 57,23% of the vote. According to Coetzee, those votes came from the largely black voting districts, which were incorporated into the province from the North West when the boundaries were changed.

‘They gerrymandered it,” he said.