South Africa's early municipal election results on Thursday showed the ANC with a sharply reduced vote share, in what could shape up to be a nightmare scenario for the long-dominant party.

With 28% of votes counted by 0922 GMT, the ANC had about 32% of the vote, narrowly ahead of the DA on 28%, results from the election commission showed.

Vote tallying was still an early stage and the outcome could change significantly. But if those figures hold the ANC would be down about 14 percentage points from its last municipal election result in 2021, which was already its worst in history.

The ANC, which has been South Africa's largest party since it led the country out of apartheid in 1994, has tended to do worse in municipal elections than nationally and has acknowledged its failures in local governance.

But a dramatic loss could open up the field to more competition in the next national elections in 2029, when the pro-business DA has hopes of becoming the country's biggest party.

DA OPTIMISTIC FOR STRONG RESULT

A projection given by South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research suggested the ANC could end up in the final tally with the same percentage of votes as it has now.

The November 4 vote was widely predicted to see the ANC lose ground nationally as voters punished it for high crime rates, corruption scandals and failing basic services such as water and electricity.

"The ANC is performing worse than expected – and expectations were already low," said Louw Nel, senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa, who said an outcome of 32% would be "the party's worst nightmare coming true."

The DA was performing strongly in several major cities while in KwaZulu-Natal province, both former president Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe party and the Inkatha Freedom Party were ahead of the ANC, he said.

"It's still early days and this early on you can't really call the outcome. But I think we will do well and I am very excited," said the DA's mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille.

ANC Chairperson Gwede Mantashe remained optimistic, telling journalists that the current result trends were not final.

"We may improve. ... Major areas, townships, and other areas have not been counted yet," Mantashe said.

COALITION TALKS TO FOLLOW

Winning Johannesburg would be a major boost for the DA, which already controls Cape Town. But Johannesburg is among several key municipalities where no party is expected to get an outright majority, meaning that parties will have to negotiate to form coalition governments.

They will have two weeks from the declaration of results - expected on Sunday - to do so.

Analysts have said that best option for stability in cities such as Johannesburg would be for the ANC to partner with the DA, mirroring the arrangement they have in national government.

But the two are ideologically opposed on key issues such as racial redress. The ANC could also decide to team up with the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters and Zuma's party uMkhonto weSizwe, cutting out the DA.