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South African Vote Tallying Enters Final Stages With ANC on 40%

Journalists and party officials monitor results as they are updated in the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) National Results Operations Centre as voting counting continues, a day after the 2024 South African general election, in Johannesburg, South Africa, 30 May 2024. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK
Journalists and party officials monitor results as they are updated in the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) National Results Operations Centre as voting counting continues, a day after the 2024 South African general election, in Johannesburg, South Africa, 30 May 2024. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK
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South African Vote Tallying Enters Final Stages With ANC on 40%

Journalists and party officials monitor results as they are updated in the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) National Results Operations Centre as voting counting continues, a day after the 2024 South African general election, in Johannesburg, South Africa, 30 May 2024. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK
Journalists and party officials monitor results as they are updated in the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) National Results Operations Centre as voting counting continues, a day after the 2024 South African general election, in Johannesburg, South Africa, 30 May 2024. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK

Vote tallying in this week's South African parliamentary election entered the final stages on Saturday, with the governing African National Congress (ANC) set to fall well short of a majority for the first time in 30 years of democracy.
The ANC has won every previous national election since the historic 1994 vote that ended white minority rule, but over the last decade its support has slid as South Africans have watched the economy stagnate, unemployment climb and infrastructure crumble, said Reuters.
With results in from over 97% of the more than 23,000 polling stations in Wednesday's vote, the ANC stood at 40.11%, a precipitous drop from the 57.50% it secured at the last national election in 2019.
The biggest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, was at 21.72%, while uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a new party led by former president Jacob Zuma, had 14.83% of the vote.
MK's strong performance, especially in Zuma's home province of KwaZulu-Natal, is one of the main reasons behind the ANC's dismal showing.
The ANC will now have to strike a coalition deal or another form of agreement with one or more smaller parties to govern, an unprecedented prospect in the post-apartheid era.
Investors in Africa's most industrialized economy will hope the uncertain picture will quickly become clear.
Political parties' share of the vote will determine the number of seats they get in the National Assembly, which then elects the next president.
That could still be the ANC's leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa, as the former liberation movement will remain the biggest party. But Ramaphosa will be badly weakened and is likely to face calls to quit from opposition parties and critics in the deeply-divided ANC.
On Friday, however, a top ANC official backed him to stay on as party leader, and analysts say there is no obvious successor to replace him.
The election commission has penciled in a results announcement for Sunday.

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US Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Workers

US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
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US Judge Orders Trump Administration to Reinstate Thousands of Fired Workers

US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)
US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 13 March 2025. (EPA)

A California federal judge on Thursday ordered six US agencies to reinstate thousands of recently-hired employees who lost their jobs as part of President Donald Trump's purge of the federal workforce.

The ruling by US District Judge William Alsup during a hearing in San Francisco is the most significant blow yet to the effort by Trump and top adviser Elon Musk to drastically shrink the federal bureaucracy. Government agencies are facing a Thursday deadline to submit plans for a second wave of mass layoffs and to slash their budgets.

Alsup's ruling applies to probationary employees at the US Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and the Treasury Department.

The judge said the US Office of Personnel Management, the human resources department for federal agencies, had improperly ordered those agencies to fire workers en masse even though it lacked the power to do so.

“It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” said Alsup, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees. They have fewer job protections than other government workers but in general can only be fired for performance issues.

Alsup ordered the agencies to reinstate workers who were fired over the last few weeks, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofit groups, and the state of Washington.

He did not order the 16 other agencies named in the lawsuit to reinstate workers, but said he would promptly issue a written decision that could expand on Thursday's ruling.

A Veterans Affairs spokesperson declined to comment. A Department of Interior spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on litigation over personnel matters.

The White House and the other agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The plaintiffs include the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers. The union's president, Everett Kelley, in a statement said the decision was an important victory against "an administration hellbent on crippling federal agencies and their work on behalf of the American public."

25,000 WORKERS

Alsup last month had temporarily blocked OPM from ordering agencies to fire probationary employees, but declined at the time to require that fired workers get their jobs back. The plaintiffs subsequently amended their lawsuit to include the agencies that fired probationary workers.

About 25,000 workers across the US government had been fired as of March 5, according to a Reuters tally, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout. The Trump administration has not released statistics on the firings, and it was not immediately clear how many employees could be affected by Thursday's decision.

In the lawsuit before Alsup, the plaintiffs claim the mass firings were unlawful because they were ordered by OPM rather than left to the discretion of individual agencies.

OPM has maintained that it merely asked agencies in a January 20 memo to identify probationary workers and decide which ones were not "mission critical" and could be fired, and did not order them to terminate anyone.

The agency on March 4 revised that memo, adding that it was not directing agencies to take any specific actions with respect to probationary employees.

OPM has pointed to the updated memo and to press releases by agencies as proof that it had no control over agencies' decisions.

Alsup on Thursday told the US Department of Justice lawyer representing OPM, Kelsey Helland, that he did not believe that was true, and scolded the government for not presenting OPM's acting director, Charles Ezell, to testify at the hearing.

“I’ve been practicing or serving in this court for over 50 years and I know how we get at the truth, and you’re not helping me get at the truth. You’re giving me press releases, sham documents,” Alsup said.

Helland said it was common for presidential administrations to prevent high-ranking agency officials from testifying in court, and that the information provided by OPM in court filings was enough to prove that it never ordered agencies to terminate workers.

Along with the lawsuit in California, several other challenges to the mass firings have been filed, including cases by 20 Democrat-led states and a proposed class action by a group of fired workers.

The Merit Systems Protection Board, which reviews federal employees' appeals when they are fired, earlier this month ordered the Agriculture Department to reinstate nearly 6,000 probationary workers at least temporarily.