MK Party concedes it can't stop parties from keeping it out of government
With more than 90 percent of all votes counted in KZN, the MK party is poised to become the province's most supported political organisation.
Thabiso Goba
FILE: Members of the MK Party sing and chant outside the Constitutional Court hearing in Johannesburg on 10 May 2024 over their leader and former President Jacob Zuma’s eligibility to stand for Parliament. Picture: AFP
AFP
The uMkhonto weSizwe party says it’s powerless to stop other parties from keeping it out of government in municipalities where it didn’t win a majority.
With more than 90 percent of all votes counted in KZN, the MK party is poised to become the province's most supported political organisation.
The party has won three municipalities with an outright majority and has the most votes in 10 other municipal councils.
There’s an unwritten rule in South African coalition politics that the party with the biggest number of votes should lead the coalition government.
However, in 2024 that rule was broken.
Despite the MK Party receiving 45 percent of the vote in KZN, the ANC, DA, IFP and NFP formed a coalition without it and kept it out of provincial government.
MK Party’s KZN leader Willie Mchunu said that the party is determined to avoid a repeat of that.
“I’m not afraid because history always repeats itself. We were not the makers of the history that happened in 2024, and we are also not going to be the makers of that history even now, as we say we will talk to everybody.”
With more than 20 municipalities expected to be hung in KZN, political parties are gearing up for intense rounds of coalition talks over the next week.
Another electoral setback puts ANC's renewal agenda back in focus
Meanwhile, the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal said that it will deepen its renewal agenda after yet another bruising electoral decline in the province.
In the 2024 general elections, the ANC received a historic low of 17 percent of the vote share in KZN.
With more than 90 percent of the votes counted in KZN, the ANC is facing another electoral decline in this year’s local government elections.
The party has won just one municipality outright, compared to 13 in the last local government elections in 2021.
“We have done much better than 2024; that’s what we are seeing in terms of the numbers. Where we have lost wards, the numbers are really close to each other; that’s why the emphasis is going to be the renewal of the ANC and what does it mean; is it people we are deploying that people are disgruntled with because surely it's not policies," says Provincial ANC spokesperson Sifiso Sonjica