Eighteen by-elections were held in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape on Wednesday, with the DA and IFP each having a good day and gaining a number of wards.
Six by-elections in uMzumbe on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast were the result of six ANC councillors being expelled for voting against an ANC mayor in the municipality. The six councillors subsequently defected to the new MK Party.
On Wednesday the ANC defended two of its seats. The IFP managed to win three of the seats off the ANC, while MK managed to win one, securing its first municipal representation in the province after its remarkable performance in last month’s general election.
The outcome means that the ANC has lost its majority on the uMzumbe council, with the party now holding 17 of the municipality’s 39 seats, and the IFP also having 17 seats.
In uMvoti (Greytown) in central KwaZulu-Natal, the IFP bagged another seat from the Abantu Batho Congress. It also won a seat off the ANC in Mthonjaneni (Melmoth).
The party defended two other seats in the province, one in uPhongola (Pongola) and another in Nongoma.
The ANC defended a seat in uMzimkhulu.
There was one other by-election in KwaZulu-Natal, in Newcastle, in the north of the province. Here the DA took a marginal ward off the ANC, winning 31% of the vote to the ANC’s 22%. The IFP won just over a quarter of the vote in the by-election, and the EFF almost 20%.
This was not the DA’s only win on Wednesday. The party was also defending three safe wards in Cape Town. Here its candidates did not need to work up too much of a sweat, with the DA easily winning all three, securing over 89% of the vote in each of the three wards.
In Beaufort West the DA also won three by-elections, but these were in wards which had previously been held by other parties. In one, the DA won a ward off the ANC, while in the other two it took seats from the PA. The three wins now gives the DA an outright majority in the Karoo town, the first time it has achieved that.
Overall, it was a very good day at the office for the IFP and DA. The MK Party’s muted showing on Wednesday will give its strategists some food for thought, with the party failing to build on the momentum it achieved in last month’s national poll.