The ANC could lose its national majority in the general elections, but South Africa's largest political party still has a significant range of options for forming a government.
The ANC has been in power for the past 30 years with a comfortable majority. In the 2019 elections, the party received 57% support nationally and gained a majority in all the provinces except for the Western Cape.
This time around, the political landscape has changed significantly, with many more parties competing for power -- a good sign for SA's democracy, but a pain for the ANC.
The party has been predicted to drop below 50% nationally and also to lose power in Gauteng and KZN.
Despite this, the ANC head of elections, Mdumiseni Ntuli, maintained that the governing party had not looked at the possibility of coalitions.
"If the ANC goes down we will have to sit down and reflect on ... the situation," he said.
He noted some hurdles the party had to overcome during its campaign.
"The most difficult task was to start the campaign and there were major problems relating to service delivery. As the incumbent, the expectations of people were directed at us.
"We began the campaign when load shedding was worse, the crisis of water provision in parts of our country was very hard. There were major concerns relating to the state of infrastructure,...
