PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — The ruling African National Congress was on course to win South Africa’s presidential and parliamentary elections by a comfortable margin with almost all votes counted Friday, but the tally showed the party lost support from five years earlier amid deep anger over corruption.
The ANC, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa, had 57 percent of the vote in Wednesday’s election, according to results announced by South Africa’s electoral commission after 95 percent of votes were counted. In 2014, the party received 62 percent of the total vote.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, had 20 percent of the vote as of Friday, down from the 22 percent it received in the last election. On Friday, 35 smaller parties jointly lodged a complaint with the electoral commission, complaining of irregularities and calling for an audit of the vote and a possible rerun of the election.
The ANC’s lead, despite its reduced margin, was seen by many as a mandate for Ramaphosa to keep working to clean up corruption within the party that inspired South Africa under Nelson Mandela’s leadership.
Another former ANC leader, Jacob Zuma, resigned as president last year amid numerous corruption allegations.
“It’s now up to Ramaphosa to clean up the ANC, to stop the looting in government,” commentator Barney Mthombothi said. “He can argue that the ANC lost its share of the vote because of the rampant corruption under the previous Zuma leadership.”