Hard-pressed Durban ratepayers as well as residents across the 100km radius of the Greater Durban-eThekwini Region, will this week face a new political reality of doing business with a coalition city council as voters boldly boycotted the ballots at the sixth local government elections held on Monday.
By poll predictions and accounts of the tally, including a low voter turn-out, nationally and province and city-wide, the ruling ANC had failed to achieve the above-50% threshold in attracting votes.
In an early victory, the DA grabbed 60% of the votes in the Umgeni Municipality – a red-alert of the changing of the guards at many of the municipalities across Durban and KZN cities and towns.
The ANC stood at 41.9% in KwaZulu-Natal by Wednesday, shadowed by the Democratic Alliance at 26.7%, the Economic Freedom Front at 11%, while the Inkatha Freedom Party strengthened its position at 10.7%.
Amidst ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa’s pledge for “renewal” and pleas to voters to “give the ANC a second chance” within its one-million strong membership, it appears to have resulted in the ANC scoring its own goal in this make-or-break election. A total of 50 of the 78 parties had contested seats in the Durban-eThekwini constituencies. Altogether, under 40% of SA’s 26.2 million electoral bloc cast their ballots in one of the biggest fields of 95 427 councillor candidates listing within 10 000 wards and the choice of 325 political parties and 1 325 independents.
“The IFP has been making steady progress since the setbacks of the 2016 local government election. This election we have honoured our founding president, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, as the face of the election based on his track record and the word ‘trust’. The IFP is not a rural or Zulu-based party, we are for all the people and the IFP took a progressive stance during the looting and violence in Phoenix. The IFP also represents Indians,” said Narend Singh, IFP MP and Chief Whip of 30 years.
By posting the IFP founder’s photograph on the posters and hustings, the IFP’s vote-grabbing strategy has worked miracles, experts commented. Millions of voters across all racial groups stayed put at home – many also chose to go to work – and the apathetic electorate delivered a stunning stay-away from the voting booths, with some citing the health risks of contracting the Covid-19 disease when using the same pens to mark the cross on the ballot forms.
As the ruling elite of the R60 billion annual budgeted eThekwini Municipality, the ANC tallied up to 40% (at the time of going to print) of the votes in KwaZulu-Natal and now faces a combined opposition from the DA, IFP and EFF, if not being relegated to the opposition benches in some of the 35 hung councils countrywide. The DA is gaining new ground and is planning victory rallies and parties in municipalities where this no-nonsense opposition party has fared well and the IFP is also confident to control municipalities that were governed by the ANC.
Within this fluid political excitement, the EFF are the wild cards in playing the casting-vote role as kingmakers, thereby pointing to a new political culture of creating governing coalitions.
While Durban will be the critical barometer for the future of city governments, where almost three million citizens reside, SA’s legislative capital, Cape Town, seems set to be governed hands down by the DA, with Patricia De Lille’s Good Party and the Cape Coloured Congress holding the balance of power in a changing scenario where minorities like the marginalised Coloured and Malay communities are determined to get a better deal from the democratic breakthrough of the struggle against apartheid.
The 600 000-plus Durban Indians, and within KZN Indians number 1.3 million nationally, continue to be floating adrift as a leaderless community without political or economic clout. The community has continued to “place bets” for the ANC, DA and IFP. The Minority Front have been non-starters since the death of its controversial, one-man-band leader, Amichand Rajbansi, and this tiny, poorly-resourced formation has been splintered by infighting, petty politics and nepotism under Shameem Thakur-Rajbansi, a lone MP in the KZN Legislature.
However, the ANC is set to win eThekwini with a reduced majority, but the local leadership has to now deal with the power-breaking of the tripartite alliance of the DA, IFP and EFF which could spell a death-knell to the ANC’s tradition of imposing majority resolutions of budgets including tender procurement, deal-making for its politically-connected BEE entrepreneurs and other wasteful expenditure.
