Five by-elections were held on Wednesday, all successfully defended by the incumbent parties. The African National Congress (ANC) defended three seats and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) one. The Democratic Alliance (DA) also successfully defended a seat, although a surge by the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) nearly derailed the DA’s defence of the seat and will have the party worried.
All three wards that the ANC defended were in the Eastern Cape. At a by-election at the University of Fort Hare the ANC secured 78% of the vote, against 22% won by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). However, only six percent of voters turned up to cast their ballots in the by-election.
In Intskika Yethu (Comfimvaba) the ANC had another easy win, managing 90% of the vote. It was also one-way traffic in Mnquma (Butterworth) where the ANC won just shy of 90% of the vote.
In contrast to the ANC, the IFP and the DA didn’t have things quite as easy.
In Mtubatuba in KwaZulu-Natal the IFP held onto the ward with 48%. It had won 47% of the vote in the 2016 municipal election. The ANC won 28% of the vote, compared to the 34% it had won in 2016. The DA will be pleased with its growth in the ward, going from 13% in 2016 to 22% in Wednesday’s by-election.
The final poll was in Limpopo, in Thabazimbi. Here the DA held on to the seat by the proverbial skin-of-its-teeth, with only 34% of the vote. This is down from the nearly 60% of the vote it had managed in 2016. The FF+ grabbed 28% (up from seven percent in 2016) while the ANC won 27%. The rest of the vote was split between the EFF and the Thabazimbi Residents’ Association.
The FF+ surge continues a pattern which has been apparent for some time. The DA is struggling to win back white Afrikaner voters and it will have to work hard to get these voters – who have been a core constituency for the party for two decades – back into the fold.