Sawt Falasteen - Municipal misery weighs on looming S.African elections

For the Democratic Alliance, the country's second-largest party, its recent by-election victory in Evaton West is a sign it may finally be shedding its white identity and winning more black support.

The loss for the African National Congress -- South Africa's historic anti-apartheid movement -- in a former stronghold may be no predictor of the outcome of key municipal elections in November. But analysts say it highlights how frustration over municipal-level failures may prompt voters to break from traditional loyalties.

"We can't live like we are animals," Evaton West resident and first-time DA voter Lesedi Lesejane told AFP in the working-class area 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Johannesburg.

"They cry for our votes but we don't get service delivery," he said of the ANC.

The DA -– formed in 2000 as a merger of three mostly white parties -– took just over 32 percent in the May by-election, double its score at the previous local elections in 2021.

The ANC took just under 32 percent, down from more than 50 percent in 2021.

It was the first DA win in a 100-percent black township ward in the country, the party said.

"We are definitely rewriting history," said Kingsol Chabalala, the DA's mayoral candidate for the Emfuleni municipality that includes Evaton West.

"The propaganda that is put out there, that the DA is a white party, is fading away," the 48-year-old said.

- ANC 'wake-up call' -

The collapse in services that prompted the voter shift is reported across South Africa, where the ANC won majorities in 161 of 213 councils in 2021.

The party of Nelson Mandela, which led South Africa to overcome apartheid, took only 46 percent of ballots nationally, dipping below 50 percent for the first time since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

"Our roads are bad. Almost every morning, we don't have water," said Khotso Motsepe, 25, who voted for the first time.

"I have seen in some places where the DA is governing that they have water and electricity," he told AFP in Evaton West.

Zikhali Barthman, 65, had been a staunch supporter of the ANC for years. "But I just could not vote for it anymore. We are desperate for better services," he said.

When AFP visited, municipal workers were fixing a road that residents said had been riddled with potholes for years.

The ANC mayor, Hassan Mako, rejected suggestions the work was being done with the election in mind.

The loss of Evaton West "is not the beginning of the end," said Mako, 37. "It is a wake-up call for the ANC."

A decision by the ANC's historic partner, the South African Communist Party, to contest municipal polls independently "weakened our election machinery", he added.

- Local interests -

The DA has launched a bold fight fronted by Helen Zille, 75, a veteran white politician for Johannesburg -- the most prized mayoral seat in the country, with a campaign that spotlights the broken state of Africa's richest city.

It leans on its claims of success in running Cape Town, where many areas boast comparatively better services but poorer communities say they are neglected as the party focuses on its white support base.

Evaton West may indicate that South Africans are moving beyond loyalties forged in the struggle against apartheid, said local government expert Susan Booysen.

"They are voting in desperation for services instead of party identity just to escape the dire living circumstances we know are so widespread," she told AFP.

However, "these are early days and that is just one ward amongst several hundred," she said, adding it will not be easy for the DA to "shake off being called a white party".

Political analyst Dirk Kotze said Evaton West was not so much a win for the DA but "rather a defeat for the ANC".

"The DA will use the win as part of their campaign but if you analyse it, they won with eight votes. It was a very tight contest," he said.

The party faced losses in the areas that it already runs where voters had not seen improvements, especially over the jobs crisis, Kotze said.

"Local politics has become more about (local) interests and who can improve the quality of people's lives," he said.

S.Abdullah--SF-PST