Well, the election is over, and the results
have been counted. The official announcement hasn't been made yet, but since the counted figures are publicly available (e.g. in the above link), that's just a formality at this point.
Nationally, the ANC did lose a chunk of votes. In this case, "losing a chunk" means dropping from 62% of the national vote down to 57%; undeniably significant, but they're still in power.
And already, there are those in the ANC who are loudly insisting that their party retaining control had nothing to do with Ramaphosa having replaced Zuma; specifically, a fellow by the name of Ace Magashule who retains a lot of political power despite a number of allegations that he's been pretty corrupt as well. (The corruption was never limited to only Zuma, unfortunately).
The DA, the party that generally comes second in these elections, continued to come second, with a hardly-changed percentage of votes, coming in at a smidge over 20%; though the EFF, the loud populist "redistribute-land-without-compensation" party experienced a significant increase in support, going up to just over 10%. And another party that jumped up a bit in the rankings is the Freedom Front (which is almost diametrically opposed to the EFF; they're big on ending all possible forms of affirmative action, or at least all possible forms that advantage the majority population group).
--------------
As far as provincial elections go, all provinces had no change in the identity of the party with majority control; that is, the DA once again won the Western Cape while the ANC won everywhere else. But in several provinces, the identity of the
second place changed; the EFF is now the official opposition in three provinces. One hopes that this will encourage them to do more than be loud and disruptive in Parliament.
And the ANC vote in all provinces has dropped in all provinces, sometimes quite significantly - up to a ten percent drop in some provinces. (It says something that there are
still provinces where they could take another ten percent drop and retain their majority). Interestingly, in the Gauteng province - a fairly small province but one with a number of major cities, making it the most economically powerful province - the ANC's majority has dropped to a mere
smidge over 50% (50.19%, to be more exact). It's clear that they're going to have to work pretty hard to retain control over that province when the next election arrives...
--------------
Personally, I'm kind of disappointed, but not really all that surprised. The ANC does have an incredibly persistent core of voters, who I suspect vote for them mainly out of gratitude for having ended Apartheid back in 1994; and Ramaphosa has been working very hard to try to win back people's approval over the last several months. Let's see what he does now that his position is a bit more secure for the next five years.