South Africa election result updates: ANC short of majority after 90% votes

A second full day of vote counting is coming to a close with the Electoral Commission expected to announce the final results this weekend.

Follow our live election results tracker here. Read an analysis of the election winners and losers here, and get a refresher about the key issues here.

Continue following all our coverage from South Africa as we bring you the final results.

On the second day of vote counting, here’s a recap of key developments:

• Vote counting began shortly after the polls closed late on Wednesday and continued into Thursday and Friday.
• More than 40 percent of the votes were tallied on the first day of counting.
• On Friday, just after 11pm (21:00 GMT), more than 90 percent votes were completed.
• So far, data shows voter turnout hovering around 58 percent, which is lower than the last election in 2019.
• Results released so far show the ANC in the lead with around 41 percent of the ballots, followed by the DA with 21 percent, the MK with 13 percent and the EFF with 9 percent.
• If the ANC fails to get 50 percent, as is predicted, it may be forced to form a coalition with other parties.
• Final results are expected to be announced by Sunday.

More than 90 percent of votes, or 21,000 of 23,292 voting districts, have been completed, the Electoral Commission said.

Follow our live tracker for all the latest results from South Africa’s elections.

It has been almost procedural over the last three decades for the ANC to use its parliamentary majority to elect its leader as president of the country. This year may not be so simple.

With just 10 percent of votes to be completed, the ANC is on 41 percent. If trends persist and the ANC gets below 50 percent it would then need an agreement or coalition with another party or parties to stay in government and get the 201 votes it needs from lawmakers to re-elect President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The new parliament must meet for its first session within 14 days of the election results being announced to choose the president. Should the ANC lose its majority, there would likely be a feverish period of bargaining between it and other parties to form some sort of coalition before parliament sits.

It is also possible that several opposition parties could join together to remove the ANC completely from government and Ramaphosa as president if they do not have a majority. However, that is a very remote possibility.

The ANC has given no indication of who it might work with if South Africa needs an unprecedented national coalition government.

Follow our live tracker for all the latest results from South Africa’s elections.

More than 89 percent of votes, or 20,868 of 23,292 Voting Districts have been completed, the Electoral Commission said.

Follow our live tracker for results from South Africa’s elections.

As we’ve been reporting, more than 85 percent of the votes have now been announced.

The Electoral Commission has seven days from the date of the elections to announce the results.

Before the polls, the IEC said it would announce the final results on Sunday.

Former President Jacob Zuma was a loyal ANC member for decades.

He now heads the rival MK Party, which is emerging as one of the biggest victors of the election, especially in KwaZulu-Natal province.

Zuma has survived a series of political setbacks and legal challenges over the years – but he’s always managed to make a comeback.

Read our story here for a detailed look at the nine lives of Jacob Zuma.

South Africa’s Daily Maverick predicts this election might have the lowest voter turnout yet.

Turnout, as calculated by the Electoral Commission, has hovered at about 58 percent since yesterday, the local outlet said, adding that this figure is “unlikely to shift too drastically”.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has predicted a final turnout figure of 60 percent, the Daily Maverick reported.

“It’s almost impossible to overstate how surprising this figure is. It is, by a long shot, the lowest turnout recorded in South African general elections since the dawn of democracy in 1994,” it said.

The results, it said, reveal a “strong anti-ANC sentiment”, among other things.

More than 85 percent of votes, or 20,196 of 23,292 Voting Districts have been completed, the Electoral Commission said.

At the Results Operating Centre in the Western Cape – the province the DA has run since 2009 – several political parties lodged an urgent objection with the Electoral Commission (IEC), local media reported.

Representatives of the parties were heard chanting “stolen votes” as they raised objections against the DA, which is in the lead with more than 90 percent of voting districts in the province completed.

The parties also jointly called for an extension of the period for submitting formal complaints.

#BREAKING The @WesternCapeDA have reached 1 million votes in the Western Cape. And opposition parties are fuming. @News24 pic.twitter.com/YDM7IogQQU

— Marvin Charles (@MarvinCharles_) May 31, 2024

The DA, which has governed the Western Cape since 2009, calls Cape Town the “best run city in South Africa”.

The party sets itself apart from the rest of the ANC-run country, which it often lambasts as “broken, collapsing, corrupt, chaotic”.

However, social activists and working class residents question who truly benefits in Cape Town.

They argue that the reality is a tale of two cities, one for the affluent and another for the poor.

Read more here.

South Africans voted in national and provincial elections to elect state legislatures and a new National Assembly, which will choose the president for the next five years.

Wednesday’s vote was the country’s seventh democratic general election since apartheid ended in 1994 when the ANC won and Nelson Mandela was elected president.

Here’s a refresher on how the elections work – explained through maps and charts.

Housing is a sore topic in South Africa, which is one of the world’s most unequal countries.

Although approximately eight in 10 South Africans (83.2 percent) live in formal homes, at least 2.2 million still live in informal dwellings. Black South Africans, who make up about 80 percent of the population, are disproportionately affected.

In Johannesburg, hostels, which were first introduced on the mines and later in townships, generally housed Black men from rural parts of the country who provided a cheap source of labour under apartheid.

Today, the sprawling blocks are dilapidated and neglected, with residents saying the government does little to support them.

Read more here.

Nationally, nearly 85 percent of the vote count is complete. But in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), the second most populous province and the stronghold of Zuma and his MK party, only 65 percent of the votes have been declared so far.

This suggests a disproportionate number of the remaining votes nationally are from KZN, which, given the MK’s dominance there, means that the ANC’s numbers could drop further – and the MK’s could rise.

Nationally, the ANC is currently garnering 41 percent of the vote and the MK about 13 percent.

Follow our live tracker for all the latest results from South Africa’s elections.

The ANC formed in 1912.

As an anti-apartheid liberation movement, it “was banned in South Africa up until 1990 and operated in exile”, South African radio host Lester Kiewit says.

“Nelson Mandela is largely cast as some form of saint in today’s pop culture, but Nelson Mandela was a revolutionary. Nelson Mandela was a founding member of the armed resistance movement of the ANC, the uMkhonto weSizwe,” which is what Jacob Zuma’s new MK party is named after.

“[Mandela] was chosen by the ANC and the mass democratic movement to be the face of liberation in South Africa.”

Kiewit spoke to Al Jazeera’s The Take about the historical backdrop to this year’s election and whether one of the most important liberation movements on the African continent could see an end to its time in power.

Listen here.

Electricity cuts have become so common in South Africa since the 2000s that Eskom, the state-owned electricity supplier, has devised a schedule for them.

It calls these periods of national exasperation “load shedding”.

Decades of low-maintenance and a lack of investment have also led to crumbling transport networks and water infrastructure.

Read more here.

As vote counting nears an end, people in South Africa are waiting to see if the ANC will take responsibility for the election outcome or blame President Ramaphosa for the results.

Political analyst Angelo Fick says the ANC in 2014 and 2016 “took collective responsibility for the decline in returns”.

“I’m not certain that the party can survive a change of leadership at this point, and they have … to present a face of unity despite all the wounds that they may feel, given these results,” he told Al Jazeera.

Follow our live tracker for all the latest results from South Africa’s elections.