Nelson Mandela's grandson, Zwelivelile 'Mandla' Mandela, on Friday (May 31) said the African National Congress (ANC) leadership must assess why the party performed so poorly in this week's election, which looked set to force it into an unprecedented coalition government after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time since apartheid ended.
With nearly 70% of votes counted from Wednesday's poll, the ANC was on 41.8%, a steep decline from 57.5% in 2019 that put the party of South Africa's first democratic president on course to be forced into a coalition.
"The leadership needs to look at and assess the current election and be able to provide answers as to how have we been able to perform so poorly," Mandla Mandela, chief of the Mvezo Traditional Council, told Reuters.
He accused the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), projected to finish second on 22.6%, of only serving the privileged few, particularly in its Western Cape powerbase which includes Cape Town.
As coalition talks loomed, the radical Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was in third place on 9.5%, while a new party formed by former president Jacob Zuma called uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) was on 12.2%, eating into ANC support.
(Production: Shafiek Tassiem, Cooper Inveen)
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