ANC Faces Defeat as DA Closes In on Gauteng’s Three Metros

But when you are on that floor and you see the faces of the people at the ANC desk, how is it like, yeah, the glum looks. Gwede Mantashe obviously is leading that delegation of the people who are at the desk there and there are various other leaders. And you can actually get the sense of defeat you could get you could start to feel it towards the end of the campaign, even though they were campaigning strumming.

But the defeat was the defeatism was already there. But you were saying that they surge at the end, and you could see that. Yeah, yeah. No, but today on the floor, they're starting to accepting that this is the case. And they ran a terrible campaign. And they ran a terrible campaign, but also they did shoot themselves in the foot by merely not doing what a government in power should do, the bare minimum. In our last conversation,

Spoke about like the things they could have done since 2024 to show some little some wins here and there, caring about people, but it does not seem to have been the case. One of that, I mean, like I meant to mention to you that you know, with ActionSA, it seems that one of the things that actually worked for both them and the DA was the action taken by an ANC ally in the form of Samuel. Oh, yes, Samuel basically.

And that your last-minute deciders among NZ and there was quite right. The backdrop to this election in Johannesburg was massive water cuts, many power cuts, and then just the sight of great steaming mounds of rubbish wherever you went. I was out, yes, I was out on voting day, and just there was

Universal image. That definitely mattered. And the ANC does seem to, I mean, like from the looks and the conversations I had with them, there is a resignation to the fact that this can now be characterized as a defeat. The last election was seen as a setback, 2024, coming down to 30%. They said it's a setback, no. And they sang their renewal song. We're going to go and renew. But they

There's a sense that we've, yeah, this time around. Do you think it's a, they see it as a defeat or will it turn out to be a route? I'll tell you why. Darrell Swanipul of the Inclusive Site Institute, he runs pollings and advises the ANC using the IPSOS Kai Bus poll. He suggests that the outcome, based on turnout, could see the two parties with just over a two percentage point of differential between them.