The African National Congress looks increasingly likely to lose its majority, while the Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party and the PA have made a strong showing as newcomers in the national political space.
While former president Jacob Zuma as MK leader and Gayton McKenzie, as PA leader, would have been jumping for joy, there is an air of nervousness around other new parties including the likes of Build One South Africa, Rise Mzansi and ActionSA.
It’s also been a good day for the Democratic Alliance, who are increasingly looking good to retain the Western Cape, while making good in roads in Gauteng.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which has built a projection model, is predicting the ANC to finish at 41.8%, the DA at 21.2%, the MK at 14%, the EFF at 9.2% and the PA at 1.9.
This was according to their latest update on the model at 3pm.
At the 20% count, the ANC had 43% of the votes - or 971,963 votes.
This was followed by the DA with 24.8% - or 555,813 votes.
In third, the EFF had 199,449 - or 8.9% of the votes.
The MK was fourth, for now, with 180,143 or 8.04% of the votes.
The PA was fifth with 91,329 votes - or 4.08% of the vote.
The Inkatha Freedom Party was sixth with 43,712 - representing 1.95%
Out of the other new parties, ActionSA, had 18,180 votes - representing 0.81% of the vote. Mmusi Maimane’s Bosa was also struggling to make an impact on the results board, with 7,320 votes so far representing 0.33%.
The other players - Rise Mzansi - were on 7,231.
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The DA’s federal chairperson, Helen Zille, speaking to IOL News at the sidelines of the Results Operations Centre in Midrand, said they were happy with their results so far
“It looks like we are going forward from 2019,” she said.
”It looks like we are holding the Western Cape, so its so far so good,” she said.
She said they were not surprised by the strong showing by the PA due to their identity politics. She said the PA was outperforming a lot of the smaller parties and the ANC.
”We are still solidly up there,” she said.
Zille said there were no commitments about coalition partners at this stage. She said they were the “party of coalitions”, but they would not go to coalitions with anyone.
Zille said the DA’s Federal Executive would meet at the weekend.
“The bottom line is that we will meet at the FedEx on Saturday, Sunday,” she said.
The IFP spokesperson said Mkhuleko Hlengwa said despite their modest showing so far, they were not threatened by the MK as it was still early and they were still confident they would make up lost ground because they believed they had done well during the door-to-door campaign and speaking with the people.
ActionSA spokesperson Samkelo Mgobhozi, in an interview with IOL News, said although their numbers weren’t as high as they expected, they were confident that they would get a big boost once the results from the metros started trickling in.
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba also told IOL News on election day that the party would deliver the “biggest surprise of these elections”.
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