DA Storms Emfuleni With 55% — ANC Collapses To Third Place As VF Plus Surges

At the Emfuleni tallying centre, ballot counters had just begun processing the votes when results from ward stations started to flood in, showing the Democratic Alliance dominating with 55.42 percent—a lead so substantial it shocked long-time observers who had seen the municipality lean left for years.

With only a small fraction of votes counted, the DA had already secured over half of the total votes in Emfuleni, which lies in Gauteng’s industrial core between Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging. Unexpectedly, the Vryheidsfront Plus claimed second place with 17.47 percent, significantly ahead of the African National Congress, which fell to a distant third with 11.34 percent—a stark decrease from its historical control in this working-class area of the Vaal.

Officials from the Electoral Commission of South Africa indicated that the tallying process was ongoing and advised residents to regard the early numbers as preliminary. A presiding officer noted, “These totals represent only the initial two percent of counted ballots,” urging the media to avoid making definitive statements until more data was available. No one from the ANC’s Emfuleni branch responded to inquiries prior to publication.

The ANC had governed Emfuleni for years, during which the area faced severe infrastructure issues, such as raw sewage spilling into tributaries of the Vaal River, frequent power outages, and a crippling R6-billion debt that hindered basic services. Residents had staged numerous protests outside municipal offices in Vanderbijlpark, demanding accountability from a government they considered fundamentally flawed. This dysfunction provided a rich opportunity for opposition parties targeting a municipality with approximately 721,000 residents.

Outside the tallying centre, a retired factory worker, with a folded voting card in his jacket, watched the updates on a television near the entrance. His expression tightened with each increase in the DA’s numbers and widened in surprise as the ANC’s figures briefly fell below those of ActionSA, which stood at 3.83 percent before stabilizing.

ActionSA ended up with 3.83 percent of the votes, the South African Communist Party garnered 3.50 percent, the Economic Freedom Fighters obtained 3.42 percent, uMkhonto we Sizwe Party received 1.18 percent, and the Pan Africanist Congress reached 0.98 percent. However, the incomplete tally means all calculations are still tentative. If these results hold as more ballots are counted, Emfuleni could illustrate one of Gauteng’s most remarkable political shifts. Yet, the question remains: who will shoulder the burden of the lost years?

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