At 7am this morning, with the IEC reporting that 58% of votes had been counted, support for the ANC was sitting at just 46.42%.
The likelihood now is that the ANC is set to give up its national majority, as the IRR had ahead of the election.
Also at 7am, the DA sat at 22.5%, roughly 5 percentage points below its 2016 showing. The IRR had forecast that the DA would secure 22% of the vote.
The EFF was sitting at just above 10%, which party leaders would see as the result of a failed election campaign, given the revolutionary potential in South Africa’s very high poverty and unemployment rates.
The IRR had forecast the EFF at 12%.
The real winner in this election is turning out to be the smaller parties who are positioned as kingmakers across several municipalities. This places immense power in the hands of small parties and the people who vote for them to hold South Africa’s larger political players to account.