The African National Congress(ANC) support is keeps on declining in KwaZulu-Natal after losing another ward in by-elections held under the Msunduzi Local Municipality on Wednesday,08 March 2023.
There were three wards that were contested during by-elections,the ANC lost Ward 2 and Ward 25 in a fiercely contested elections.
These two wards won by oppositions because Democratic Alliance won Ward 25 with 2641 votes while the ANC only got 89 votes which was a huge decline compare to 2021 elections where it got 221 votes and the Economic Freedom Fighters are failing to gain support in that region got only 10 votes.
That Ward 25 retained by DA with an increased majority when compare to 2021 because then recived 88.20% and now got 96.39%,that shows that the people of uMsunduzi have faith on it.
The Democratic Alliance is governing uMgeni Local Municipality after winning it during the 2021 Local Government Elections and that municipality is the only hope for DA to excel so that it will continue to lure people of KwaZulu-Natal to vote for them in the 2024 National Government Elections.
ANC failed to win Ward 2 which won by Inkatha Freedom Party(IFP) by a huge margin of 2408 votes while the ANC got only 1649 votes,meanwhile EFF got 77 votes,PAC got 25 votes and AZAPO got only 8 votes.
It is evident that the DA and IFP had an agreement not to contest each other because in Ward 25 the IFP did not contest and also the DA in Ward 2 did not contest,that secret recipe used by these oppositions helped to neutralise the ANC in the uMsunduzi Municipality.
After these recent by-elections the ANC lost one more seat in the Msunduzi council and is already have less than 50% in that city.
The ANC failed to lure voters at Ward 2 despite its dirty attempts which they used when they tried to discredit the IFP councillor Sibusiso Ntuli by telling voters that he had criminal charges hanging over his head which some dates back to in early 2000,one of those cases involved rape which happened in 2015 and others irrelevant cases.
Msunduzi Local Municipality encompasses the city of Pietemaritzburg,which is the capital city of KwaZulu-Natal province and economic hub for Umgugundlovu Distric Municipality.