South Africa’s ruling ANC party looked set to deliver its worst ever electoral performance since the end of apartheid, with support expected to dip below 50%in local government polls. With more than half of polling stations reporting following Monday’s fiercely contested elections, the African National Congress stood at slightly under 46 percent of the vote, according to electoral commission figures. The municipal elections had been widely viewed as a referendum on the ANC, tainted by corruption and facing a backlash over poor stewardship of an ailing economy beset by chronically high unemployment, and on its uninterrupted 27 years in charge of Africa’s most industrialised nation. The ANC has blamed the poor showing on the coronavirus pandemic, apathy and electricity blackouts imposed by the country’s energy utility Eskom. “I don’t think we could have done better,” ANC’s deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte told AFP. “We believe that some of our own voters stayed away from the polls but … we are not looking at this as a great tragedy, we are looking at this as an opportunity to improve.” The result raises the possibility of the legacy party of Nelson Mandela being forced to govern the country in a coalition, should they be replicated in the next national election in 2024. But the opposition remains fragmented, with the ANC’s main rival, the Democratic Alliance (DA), second on 23% in Tuesday’s count and the Marxist EFF, led by Julius Malema, third with 10%. Poor service delivery has dogged South Africa for years while senior ANC party members, including former president Jacob Zuma, face corruption investigations. Meanwhile unemployment has hit 34.4%. Frustrations with the ANC government played out in July when widespread rioting and looting erupted following Zuma’s imprisonment for contempt after refusing to testify in a corruption investigation. The unrest claimed at least 354 lives. Until 2016, the ANC had won more than 60% at every election since the country’s first multi-racial vote in 1994 when Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president. The party’s support slipped from 62% in the 2011 municipal elections to 54 percent during the 2016 vote. Ralph Mathekga, analyst and author of books on ANC politics, said, the election could be “a predictor for what is looming at the next general election. “If the ANC drops below 50% … South Africa will no longer be led by a hegemonic party,” he said, adding that the result could threaten President Cyril Ramaphosa’s position as president when the ANC elects its leader next year. But no other single party yet seems remotely ready to rival the ANC. The DA has struggled to shed its image as a party of white privilege in a country that is nine tenths non-white, while the EFF’s radical rhetoric scares many voters off. As well as avoiding the loss of its overall majority, the ANC hopes to win back metropolitan areas it lost to opposition-led coalitions in the 2016 poll, including commercial hub Johannesburg and capital Pretoria. At 1815 GMT, results for Johannesburg from 29% of polling stations gave the ANC 37%, against 22% for the DA. The DA was meanwhile leading in Tshwane, which includes Pretoria, with 39% of the vote against the ANC’s 29%, on results from 19% of stations. ActionSA, the most popular newcomer party, whose leader, Herman Mashaba, has been criticised for vociferous anti-immigrant remarks, was on 1.6% nationwide, but polling 17% in Johannesburg, putting it third there.