While the ANC is not crying foul about the results of last week’s local government elections, it wanted a better understanding of why things turned out the way they did, secretary general Gwede Mantashe said on Thursday.

The party would discuss the proportional representation system during its NEC meeting in Irene, Pretoria, over the next four days, he told reporters in Pretoria.

“In a number of areas where we have a majority of wards, we ended up being smaller. An example is Port Elizabeth, where we have 60% of the wards, but we become 40% overall.”

In Johannesburg, the party took the majority of wards, but its overall percentage of the votes shrunk.

“We are not crying foul, but we are raising the disadvantages of giving space to the smaller parties,” he said.

According to the PR system, parties are awarded seats in councils in proportion to the number of votes they receive.

“In 16 municipalities in the country there is no outright winner. In a big chunk of municipalities that we control, 161, we are controlling the quorum of 27. We are looking into those statistics and what are the implications of those results,” said Mantashe.

They would look at the implications of four metros being governed through coalitions and analyse the party’s performance in elections since 1994 to determine if there was a trend.

“Is that a trend that is going to continue forever and what must we do to arrest that and turn it around?” he asked.

The party had intended holding a lekgotla for the next four days, but replaced that with the discussion about the election results.