Editorial: A truly historic achievement
One observer on social media summed it up in five words yesterday: “Great Kei started all this.” Quite possibly, it did. For it was from a voting district in this small and rural Wild Coast municipality on Wednesday night that the first results in the 2016 local government elections were declared, in favour of the DA with 10 whole votes.
It prompted some in half-jest to question whether the outcome would prove broadly prophetic. In Nelson Mandela Bay, it did.
The country’s most contested metro was gifted to the opposition last night after a stunning reversal of fortune for the ANC, which suffered one bloody nose after another in polls across the country’s urban centres.
The deployment of football supremo Danny Jordaan to the mayoral hot seat promised much, yet fell well short in the end. Quite simply, voters saw the ruse.
The DA’s Athol Trollip, who launched his mayoral bid last year, was unremitting in his message. He plugged away at the anti-corruption trope and promised “change”, which apparently blew in with the gales on voting day. It happened elsewhere, too. On the urban battlefields of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape – particularly in the metros – the DA now either owns outright bragging rights or has made a serious assault on the ANC’s once inviolable turf to the extent that last night several opposition coalitions were suddenly shaping up as the evening wore on.
Trollip’s feat is astonishing given the swing involved: in 2011, his party gained 40.1% of the vote to the ANC’s 51.91%. This time it was a near switch: the ANC plunged to 40.99% while Trollip almost secured the magical halfway mark with 46.65% of the vote.
Like the metros in Gauteng, it puts a coalition government on the table, which comes with its own set of problems.
The horse-trading will play out in the coming days, no doubt. In the meantime, the DA can celebrate a truly historic achievement.
As for the ANC, its left with one inescapable truth. Our political landscape has forever shifted, not only in Nelson Mandela Bay, but far north and south of the mighty Great Kei.
