Last Monday South Africans voted in the local government elections.
The ANC only managed to garner below 50% of the votes in these elections for the first time since coming into power 27 years ago.
South Africans have been expressing their discontent with the ANC in different ways, some through protests and others on social media, in surveys and at the ballot box.. Among their grievances are service delivery, unemployment, crime, poverty and corruption allegations against government officials.
Despite being unhappy with how the party conducts itself, for some in SA, the ANC remains their party of choice.
The ANC voter share in local municipality elections has significantly decreased in all the provinces — comparing the 2016 and 2021 local government elections as on the IEC Results Dashboard. The two most impoverished provinces in the country, Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, had the smallest drop of all the provinces.
Dr Mbali Dhlomo-Sibiya, a senior social psychology lecturer at Unisa, said loyalty to a political group can be explained in psychology.
Here’s Dhlomo-Sibiya’s perspective on loyalty to groups: