South Africa was set to end three decades of dominance by the party that freed it from apartheid on Saturday, as voters angry at joblessness, inequality and power shortages slashed the African National Congress's (ANC) share of the vote to 40%.
A dramatically weakened mandate for the legacy party of Nelson Mandela, down from the 57.5% it got in the previous 2019 parliamentary election, means the ANC must share power with a rival in order to keep it - an unprecedented prospect.
"We can talk to everybody and anybody," Gwede Mantashe, the ANC chair and current mines and energy minister, told reporters in comments broadcast by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), dodging a question about who the party was discussing a possible coalition deal with.
Vote tallying from Wednesday's poll was entering the final stages on Saturday morning, with results in from over 98% of polling stations giving the ANC 40.29%.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), had 21.63% and uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a new party led by former president Jacob Zuma, managed to grab 14.71%.
The ANC has won every previous national election by a landslide since the historic 1994 vote that ended white minority rule, but over the last decade its support has dwindled as the economy stagnated, unemployment rose and roads and power stations crumbled.
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