Elections 2021 live: With 40% of the vote declared, ANC still below 50%

To keep updated with all the latest news, trends and analysis of this year’s local government elections, just scroll through the live blog below, which is being updated 24 hours a day as The Citizen keeps its finger on the pulse of who will be in charge of each of the 213 councils being contested.

At 40% of the vote counted at around 4.15pm on Tuesday, the ANC was down from the nearly 54% it received in 2016, with the DA and EFF maintaining their percentages.

It is still early days, but with 40% of the voting districts declared around the country, this is what the leaderboard looks like:

• ANC – 47%
• DA – 22.81%
• EFF – 9.77%
• FF+ – 3.14%
• IFP – 4.03%

The Independent Civic Organisation of South Africa (ICOSA) has gained six seats and a council so far.

The Patriotic Alliance (PA) and ActionSA have also done well, taking many seats from the ANC and DA as the early results come in. Ten independents have also won a seat.

The vote casting on Monday was all done and dusted, and perhaps one of the few good things that could come out of this looking like the lowest voter turnout in South African democratic history is that the count could be concluded far more quickly than in previous years.

That news may also come as music to the ears of the many parties contesting the ANC for power, as low turnouts tend to shrink its share of the vote. The low turnout was blamed on voter apathy, unhappiness about load shedding, fears about Covid-19 and general protest at years of poor governance, corruption, maladministration, wasteful expenditure, lack of service delivery and outright theft.

In early results on Tuesday morning, a clear trend began to emerge that ActionSA was a popular choice in the municipalities it chose to contest and focus on intensively. Particularly in Johannesburg, former mayor Herman Mashaba stands to take a sizeable share of the vote from his former party, the DA, while also possibly hurting the ANC.

The early mood also suggested that the EFF was largely able to rely on its faithful army of red berets after it mounted an energetic nationwide campaign.

While there were some reported voting irregularities, the day proceeded for the most part peacefully.

It now remains to be seen who will have the power to pick mayors in councils before this year is out.

The elections have taken place very late this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, with the Independent Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) instructed by the Constitutional Court not to delay going to the polls any later than 1 November 2021.