Five by-elections were held in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal on Wednesday, with the DA and ANC successfully defending these seats.
The DA was defending two seats in Gauteng. In Ekurhuleni the DA relatively easily held on to a seat in Kempton Park, with the party winning 66% of the vote, a slight decline compared to the 2021 local government election. The FF+ came second with nearly 20% of the vote, while the EFF was the only other party to win more than 10% of the vote on Wednesday, securing 10.8%.
The other Gauteng by-election was held in Lesedi (Heidelberg). Here the DA again had a fairly easy defence, winning 52% of the vote, a slight increase on the result in the last election held in the ward.
The FF+ won just over a quarter of the vote, while the ANC managed about 15%.
The final ward which the DA defended was in eThekwini. On Wednesday it won over 80% of the vote, an increase of more than ten percentage points compared to the November 2021 poll.
The other two by-elections were also held in KwaZulu-Natal, where the ANC defended two seats.
In Mandeni (Stanger) the ANC won 68% of the vote in Wednesday’s by-election, a slight decrease compared to the 2021 municipal poll. The IFP managed just under 20% of the vote, while the EFF secured 13.7%.
The final by-election was held in uMzimkhulu in the south of the province. The ANC again had a fairly easy defence, winning 65.7%. This was a decline from the 79.5% it won in November 2021.
The IFP saw a surge in support in the ward. It won only 15 votes in the ward in November 2021, but managed nearly 500 on Wednesday, indicating that the party is continuing to eat into the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal support base.