ANC races ahead of EFF, MK to retain grip on Mpumalanga ward
The ANC easily retained a fiercely contested ward in the township of Simile in Sabie, Mpumalanga, on 18 June. The EFF finished well ahead of the uMkhonto Wesizwe party and a regional party in the battle for second place.
Ward 6 (Sabie Simile), Thaba Chweu in Ehlanzeni: ANC 53% (45%) EFF 28% (29%) MK 10% (7%*) AUM 6% (18%) Labour 1%
The setting: Ward 6 mainly comprises the Simile township next to the forestry town of Sabie on the R532 Panorama Route. It also encompasses the village of Tweefontein. SiSwati is the main language in the ward. A landmark is the Bridal Veil Falls. Sabie is close to the pancake capital of South Africa – Graskop. The seat of Thaba Chweu is Mashishing, formerly Lydenburg. Springbok rugby player Kwagga Smith hails from this municipality. Thaba Chweu is part of Ehlanzeni which includes Nelspruit, Bushbuckridge and Malalane.
The 2022 by-election: Paul Mokgosinyane won the ward for the African Unified Movement (AUM), having left the ANC and having won it for the latter in the local government elections. Mokgosinyane – who served as a councillor and community leader in Simile for the ANC for a number of years – beat the party by 188 votes as he carried two of the three voting districts in the ward. Those two districts are centred on Simile. Tweefontein, the smallest voting district, was won by the ANC.
The 2023 by-election: The ANC won back this seat from the AUM. The second by-election in the ward since the 2021 local government elections took place in late 2023.
Mokgosinyane was expelled from the AUM. He decided to run as an independent in the second by-election and was hoping to retain the ward for the third time in two years.
The ANC won back the ward by winning both of the Simile voting districts. Mokgosinyane proved not to be a factor in the second by-election as the EFF jumped from fourth to second place in the ward. The party won the Tweefontein voting district off the ANC and ran it close in the more-populous Simile district.
The AUM might have fallen from first to third place, but there was some encouragement for the party as it proved the assumption wrong that all of its support in the ward was tied to Mokgosinyane. Mokgosinyane had been a strong feature of Sabie politics for several elections. His poor showing would have invited speculation about his political retirement.
The 2024 provincial election: The ANC won close to two-thirds of the vote in this ward on the 2024 ballot with a 64% return. The uMkhonto Wesizwe (MK) party came second with 13%, 23 votes ahead of the EFF on 12%.
When considering the whole Thaba Chweu municipality, the ANC came in first with 55%, while the DA was runner-up with 21%. While MK beat the EFF in Ward 6 on the provincial ballot, the EFF was comfortably ahead of MK in the municipality. The red berets took 12% of the vote while MK was fourth with 5%.
The 2025 by-election: The new ward councillor died. The AUM was back on the ballot. Former ward councillor Mokgosinyane was chosen as the MK candidate for the by-election. The Labour Party was also testing the political waters outside of the iron ore belt. While Action SA did not contest the by-election, Action SA did endorse the AUM candidate in the by-election.
The ANC beat the EFF by 566 votes in a by-election that was less competitive than the previous two in the ward since 2021. This was despite the fact that MK was on the ballot this time. The ANC won more than 50% of the vote in both Simile voting districts. The party also finished first in the sparsely populated Tweefontein district, beating the EFF there this time.
The EFF beat MK in all three voting districts. Its support was consistent in all three, sitting between 27% and 29%. MK was a distant third. Mokgosinyane does seem to have run out of electoral road in this ward. MK won 12% of the vote in the most-populous district in the ward but finished behind the AUM in the other two. The AUM's support declined by two-thirds in this by-election. The party won this seat in 2023 and now finds itself in fourth place. It will have to do a lot of introspection here. The Labour party struggled in yet another by-election. It has been unable to replicate its debut success from the iron ore belt of Thabazimbi.
The next round of by-elections will be on 25 June when the DA defends a seat in Tshwane and faces off against the Patriotic Alliance in Mossel Bay. The ANC will aim for a big win in a Knysna by-election in the Western Cape. DM
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