http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/south-africa-elections-anc-loses-control-of-pretoria-a7176436.htmlEssentially, over the past 22 years, this country has slowly been destroyed by the ANC. Mandela was excellent, and with the exception of a few stupid things Thabo Mbeki did and said, he was actually fairly good as well. He prioritised education, instead of Black Economic Empowerment and giving out free houses, and actually tried to be as friendly to the economy as reasonably possible.
Jacob Zuma took power after facing one scandal after another, partly through shrewd political manoeuvring, and partly through being so corrupt that no one was really prepared for him, and has proven to be the worst thing ever to happen to this country. Prior to him taking power, the Democratic Alliance (essentially a reformed and refocused National Party, the party that began apartheid) couldn't have dreamt of taking power in any place with a black majority, despite being supremely competent, but with the ANC's failure to deliver on basic services, and Zuma's corruption and poor decision making, our country has gone to shit, and the black voters in the urban areas have rallied behind the DA or EFF to oppose them.
The DA now has the opportunity to form a coalition to take power in all major metros, and with the way its support has increased in Cape Town and the Western Cape since taking power through a coalition in 2006, it is highly unlikely that the ANC will win back these metros if it doesn't get rid of Zuma, and seriously comes down hard on its corrupt party members.
So it's a win all around, even if the ANC remains largely uncontested in rural areas, where people don't have ready access to technology or education, and are thus ignorant of all the ways the ANC has turned us into a third world shitstain.
With the ANC's poor performance in the metros, our currency, the rand, has strengthened again. But it is under their pitiful leadership that we went from having a currency valued at R3.00 to the US$ to the catastrophic R18.00 to the US$ we experienced a few months ago after the Zuma-Gupta scandal, when Zuma fired our finance minister, and replaced him with a puppet minister for the Gupta family. The move obliterated R3 billion from the national coffers over night, and it was so catastrophic that he had to fire this puppet minister two days later, and replace him with someone who actually knows how to do the job. Under Zuma, our power utility, Eskom, became bankrupt, and we faced blackouts on a national level all through 2015, and yet the puppets he placed in charge of the utility rewarded lucrative contracts to his son, and the Guptas. This is in addition to building himself a R200 million homestead with money he stole from the taxpayer, and also the acquisition of a R2 billion private jet, also payed by the tax payer, not his own salary, which is itself highly exorbitant to begin with.
He installed so many cronies in the party, that the ANC even considered allowing him to serve a third term by attempting to change the laws preventing that.
Under him, his own party has become so divided, that the malcontents of the ANC started riots all throughout Pretoria when learning of the ANC's new mayoral candidate for the city.
So after all that, it is a wonder that the ANC managed to do as well as it did. The thing is that the people in this country view the ANC as something more akin to a religious movement than a political entity that has to serve the people, and this has encouraged by the ANC itself, especially in their attempts to alter history and make it seem like they were the only entity that fought apartheid. White politicians, scholars and artists who fought the regime just as hard have been forgotten. So it's a wonder the DA did as well as it did in this election.
Also, sorry for the length of the post. I can talk about this shit all day.
EDIT: Also, just to clarify, since I've possibly given quite the wrong impression. When I said the currency went from R3.00 to the US$ to R18.00, I didn't mean that it happened all at once. I should have clarified that it was R3.00 in 1994, the year the ANC officially took power, and over time was raped repeatedly to reach its pitiful state today.
