ANC Faces Bruising Defeat in South African Local Elections
With more than 80% of ballots counted, the African National Congress is on course for under a third of the national vote, according to The Guardian.
JOHANNESBURG - The African National Congress is on course to suffer a "bruising defeat" in South Africa's local elections, according to a report by The Guardian, with more than 80% of ballots counted. The outlet reported that the party of Nelson Mandela was falling to under a third of the vote nationally.
The Guardian reported that the ANC's share of the national vote is almost 14 percentage points below its result in the 2021 local elections. The outlet's summary of the story, written by Rachel Savage in Johannesburg, does not give exact percentages for either year, so the precise size of the gap cannot be confirmed from the material available.
According to the same report, Wednesday's vote was fragmented and marked another stage in a process that the summary does not describe, as the excerpt breaks off before that point. The Guardian describes the ANC as a former liberation movement, a description that places the party's current standing against its history of leading the country's anti-apartheid struggle.
The Guardian's summary does not identify which parties gained the votes the ANC lost, and it gives no final result, since the count was described as more than 80% complete. Further detail on the remaining ballots and on the parties that gained ground is not contained in the material on which this account is based.
This account relies on a single source, The Guardian, and has not been checked against other reporting. The figures and characterizations above are the outlet's own.
Sources: The Guardian: ANC faces bruising defeat in South African local elections with 80% of ballots counted.