Paul Botes/AFP/Getty Imagesters queue outside a polling station in Juju Valley, Polokwane, on May 29, 2024, during South Africa’s general election. 

Voters queue outside a polling station in Juju Valley, Polokwane, on May 29, 2024, during South Africa’s general election. 

The African National Congress, which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid, making Nelson Mandela its first president and post-apartheid leader, must now form a coalition with another party or parties to govern the country.

“We can talk to everybody and anybody,” Gwede Mantashe, the ANC chair and current mines and energy minister, told reporters in comments carried by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), dodging a question about who the party was discussing a possible coalition deal with.

Despite the ANC’s result, President Cyril Ramaphosa could still keep his job, as the former liberation movement was on course to get about twice as many votes as the next party. 

Vote tallying from Wednesday’s election was entering its final stages on Saturday, with results from 99.53% of polling stations giving the ANC 40.21%. This is a dramatic drop from the 57.5% the ANC received in the last election on May 7, 2014, which was the fifth election under universal suffrage since the end of apartheid.

The official opposition party, the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), had about 22% of the vote.

Behind them were two ANC splinter parties: the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK), led by Jacob Zuma, who served as South Africa’s president from 2009 to 2018, captured nearly 15% of the vote, and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) had nearly 10%, data from the country’s electoral commission showed.

South Africans angry at joblessness, inequality, power shortages, and the lack of clean drinking water have slashed their support for the ANC.