Both the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) retained seats in four by-elections this week.
Three of the seats were held by the ANC, while the DA defended a ward in Knysna.
In Ndlambe (Port Alfred) in the Eastern Cape, the recent pattern of huge ANC wins in by-elections in the province held, with the party securing a whopping 97% of the vote in Wednesday’s poll. The only other party in the contest was the Economic Freedom Fighters. In the 2016 municipal election, the ANC won just under two-thirds of the vote and the DA nearly a third, making its absence in the ward on Wednesday somewhat surprising. Turnout was low, with less than a quarter of registered voters casting a ballot.
The ANC defended two other wards, in KwaZulu-Natal. In the first, in uMzumbe in the southern part of the province, the ANC won 60% of the vote, a decline from 74% in 2016. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) was the main challenger here, seeing its vote nearly double to 36% from the 19% it won in the last local government elections. The rest of the vote was shared between the EFF and the National Freedom Party.
In the second contest, the ANC won 53% of the vote in Jozini, bordering Mozambique and eSwatini in northern KwaZulu-Natal, up from 48% in 2016. The main challenger was the IFP, which won 45% of the vote.
The fourth by-election on Wednesday was in Knysna. Here, the DA defended its seat with 42% of the vote, down slightly from the 44% it won in 2016. It may be that the party is finally stemming the bleeding of votes it has suffered from for most of this year. The main challengers in the ward were the ANC (29%) and the EFF (13%). In 2016, the Congress of the People (Cope) was the DA’s main challenger in the ward, taking nearly 30% of the vote, but the party did not field a candidate this time round. It would seem that the ANC and EFF boost possibly came from former Cope voters.
Overall, the incumbents will be happy with Wednesday’s results, although the IFP resurgence in KwaZulu-Natal continues, which could cause some problems for the ANC in that province in the next municipal elections in 2021.