The first set of by-elections since the November local government election were held on Wednesday.
Five polls were held, four in KwaZulu-Natal and one in the Northern Cape.
In only one election did the incumbent party lose its seat, with the National Freedom Party (NFP) taking a seat off the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in Nongoma in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
This was one of two by-elections held in Nongoma on Wednesday, with the NFP successfully defending its other seat.
However, the IFP’s loss of its seat now means that the party could lose control of the municipality. It is currently governed by the IFP (which had 21 seats on the 45-seat council) with the support of the EFF, which has two seats. The IFP has now had its seat share reduced by one and a possible coalition of the ANC (eight seats), NFP (which now has 14 seats), and the National People’s Front, which has one seat, could now govern the municipality.
In eThekwini the ANC held on to a seat in a by-election. The ANC won the seat in November with 48% of the vote, with its closest rivals being the EFF (16%) and the DA (14%).
In Wednesday’s by-election the ANC secured 41.5% of the vote, with the DA managing just over 20% and the EFF just behind the DA.
The election was necessary because the ANC candidate for the ward, Siyabonga Mkhize, had been killed before November’s vote.
One other by-election was held in KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday, in Okhahlamba (Bergville) in the south of the province. In November the IFP won the seat with 48% of the vote, closely followed by the ANC with 39.5%. On Wednesday the IFP easily defended the ward, winning 57.9% of the vote, with the ANC trailing with just over a quarter of the vote.
One other by-election was held in the Northern Cape, in Kai !Garib (Kakamas). The ANC held onto the seat, seeing its vote share increase slightly, from 51% to 59%. In second place was a local outfit, Hope for the Future, which saw its support go from 26% to 37%. The EFF trailed in third place with four percent of the vote.
The NFP will likely be the happiest out of the various parties that competed on Wednesday, being the only one to swing a ward to itself.