South Africa's leading ANC party trounced in municipal elections over lack of basic infrastructure

South Africa’s leading left-wing party, the African National Congress, received a major rebuke from voters in cities including the provincial capital of Johannesburg over failures to meet basic infrastructure needs.

The right-wing Democratic Alliance (DA) made significant gains in recent local elections, giving its mayoral candidate in Johannesburg, Helen Zille, a strong shot at sailing to victory in the final count.

The 75-year-old white leader, affectionately nicknamed "Gogo" ("Grandmother" in Zulu), previously served as mayor of the nation's second-largest city, Cape Town, which also remained in DA control.

A top issue in the elections was ANC's failure to address shortages in services including water, electricity, road maintenance, streetlights and uncollected refuse, the Los Angeles Times reported.

ANC managed to maintain an overall majority of support but posted its worst-ever showing since the end of the first Apartheid in the mid-1990s.

“This has been a very catastrophic outcome for the ANC,” the party’s secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, said Saturday.

“We knew this disaster is coming,” Mbalula added. “We’re staring at it. As we got into elections, the cost of living of our people was too high. The middle class have turned on the ANC in big numbers.”

Its overall share of the vote, 30.76 percent, was down roughly 15 percent from what it received five years ago, the BBC reported.

“We accept the will of the people however concerning it might be,” said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the current ANC party leader.

“We accept that this is how the people of South Africa in our towns, in our cities, in our metros have spoken, and this is their verdict,” he added. “We accept it with humility. It is a decline that is concerning, that is how I characterise it.”

ANC was the party of Nelson Mandela, the much-revered former president and civil-rights leader who was the first to lead it under its post-Apartheid constitution.

However, Ramaphosa has done little to address a new wave of anti-white extremism that is directed largely at Boer landowners, the native-born holdovers from the country’s former Dutch colonizers.

The current president's tacit support for what US President Donald Trump and others have labeled a reverse Apartheid against white farmers may also have played a role in recent political backlash.

The white-dominated DA received 24.64 percent of the overall vote, up roughly 3 percent from five years ago.

Nonetheless, two other far-left parties, the populist uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK) and socialist Economic Freedom Fighters, have both made significant gains in recent years.