South Africa needs “a new chapter, one without the ANC in power”, Phumlani Majozi, executive director of the African Markets Institute, said yesterday, welcoming the decline of the African National Congress (ANC), which Majozi put at 30.8% of the national vote.

“The ANC has severely damaged South Africa, locally and internationally,” Majozi wrote. He said the ANC “remains the country’s biggest party” and got 45.6% in the 2021 local government elections, calling the fall “a substantial drop of nearly 15 percentage points”.

“I’m also grateful that the Economic Freedom Fighters [EFF] radical socialists performed badly,” Majozi wrote. He said the EFF won “roughly 6.2% of the national vote, down from about 10% in the 2021 local government elections”.

“As a classical liberal, I welcome the clear message voters sent,” Majozi continued, saying the centre-right parties, which Majozi listed as the Democratic Alliance (DA), ActionSA, the Freedom Front Plus and the Patriotic Alliance, “all strengthened their positions”.

Majozi wrote that the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), contesting local elections for the first time, “will implode”.

“It’s a chaotic party with no future without Jacob Zuma,” Majozi wrote.

Citing a post on X by journalist Ivo Vegter, Majozi wrote that “for the first time since 1994, the combined national vote of the ANC, EFF, MKP, and SACP [South African Communist Party], all left-wing, fell below 50% in these elections”.

Majozi stressed that the news was positive “for now ... things can change in politics, sometimes dramatically”.