After suffering its worst election result, what's next for the ANC — and for South Africa?

South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) party is forced to confront its worst electoral setback to date after securing under 31% of the vote in the country's significant local government elections; party leaders themselves have described the result as "catastrophic." This outcome marks a steep decline for the party that had once led South Africa's liberation struggle; the party that had dominated the country's political landscape since the end of apartheid in 1994. The result reflects growing public frustration about the ANC's lack of performance in key areas such as skyrocketing unemployment, poor service delivery, local governance failures and years of graft and corruption — sometimes at the highest levels of government.