The early stages of voter counting in the 2021 local government elections resumed on Tuesday, with South Africa’s highly sought-after metros showing signs of a tight race ahead for the ANC and main opposition parties.
2021 Elections: Results in SA’s biggest metros
Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA has proven to be a thorn on the sides of the ‘Big Three’ political parties, namely the ANC, DA and EFF.
Early indications observed from the latest voter count suggest that Mashaba’s newly established party could cause a great deal of upset to his former associates in north and northwestern wards of Johannesburg.
More importantly, the ANC could, in the end, lose grasp of key wards in Soweto, as ActionSA has surfaced as the movement people in that region have looked to for answers to service delivery issues.
Thus far, by all accounts, the race in the 2021 municipal elections is still, at a national level, a tight contest between the two major political powerhouses. On one hand, the ANC could, in the end, be forced into a sobering when it loses control of crucial battleground metros to either the DA or coalition governments.
On the other, the ‘Blues’ may find themselves in need of coalition support to take control of metros outside the Western Cape. It appears, at least in the early stages, that John Steenhuisen’s vision of the DA re-emerging — after the recent exodus — as a stand-alone centralist government may have to be placed on the back-burner in metros like Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and eThekwini.
Here is a look at the election results from South Africa’s metros, updated at 12:01 on Tuesday 2 November 2021:
Buffalo City
- ANC: 76.13% (8 952 votes)
- EFF: 10.74% (1 263 votes)
- DA: 8.54% (1 004 votes)
City of Cape Town
- DA: 58.49% (107 649 votes)
- ANC: 14.8% (27 234 votes)
- CCC: 5.91% (10 880 votes)
Ekurhuleni
- ANC: 36.62% (87 933 votes)
- DA: 30.77% (73 896 votes)
- EFF: 13.79% (33 121 votes)
eThekwini
- ANC: 53.2% (21 168 votes)
- DA: 23.94% (9 524 votes)
- EFF: 8.82% (3 510 votes)
City of Johannesburg
- ANC: 34.83% (54 548 votes)
- DA: 24.94% (39 048 votes)
- ActionSA: 17.84% (27 932 votes)
Mangaung
- ANC: 44.47% (29 635 votes)
- DA: 32.04% (21 352 votes)
- EFF: 9.32% (6 151 votes)
Nelson Mandela Bay
- ANC: 44.16% (28 253 votes)
- DA: 36.71% (23 477 votes)
- EFF: 7.53% (4 813 votes)
City of Tshwane
- DA: 40.4% (36 956 votes)
- ANC: 28.18% (25 758 votes)
- VF Plus: 10.5% (9 600 votes)