DA Storms Joburg With 35% — ANC Crashes to 20% in South Africa’s Richest City

Tuesday night delivered a seismic political moment inside the Johannesburg counting centre at Nasrec, where Democratic Alliance tallies surged to 35 percent and pushed the governing ANC into a humiliating second place at just 20 percent.

With the majority of voting districts captured, the DA held a commanding 15-percentage-point advantage over the African National Congress, which allegedly suffered its worst metropolitan performance in the city since the democratic era began. The Economic Freedom Fighters polled approximately 11 percent, while the uMkhonto weSizwe party secured roughly 8 percent — reshaping coalition mathematics entirely.

Independent Electoral Commission spokesperson Philly Dlamini confirmed the figures represented verified, official tallies and urged the public to await a final proclamation before drawing conclusions. DA Johannesburg regional chairperson Leah Knott celebrated outside the venue, telling supporters the outcome reflected a mandate for clean, functional governance. ANC provincial secretary TW Mhlongo acknowledged the numbers were deeply troubling and vowed an internal review.

The trajectory of DA dominance across Gauteng’s largest metro stretches back to 2016, when the party first seized control of the municipality alongside a fragile multi-party arrangement. Council subsequently removed then-mayor Herman Mashaba in 2019 amid coalition collapse, before the DA recaptured executive authority in 2021 under Mpho Phalatse — a tenure marked by both infrastructure battles and persistent load-shedding disputes.

Among the most striking scenes at Nasrec, a retired schoolteacher from Eldorado Park named Grace Sithole clutched a hand-drawn tally sheet she had personally compiled across four hours of live television viewing, every number written in blue ballpoint pen. She wept openly when the DA figure crossed thirty percent, whispering that her late husband had waited forty years to witness an opposition sweep of this magnitude in the city he called home.

What remains unresolved is whether the DA can govern alone or must again negotiate a governing pact with smaller formations — and whether the ANC, stripped of its traditional Joburg stronghold, will accept a junior partnership or retreat entirely into opposition benches. The question hanging over every Johannesburg street corner tonight is a simple one: after thirty years of ANC control in this city, who actually runs Joburg tomorrow morning?

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