South Africans vote in local government elections on November 4, and the likely result is already visible: councils that nobody wins. Oxford Economics Africa’s polling forecasts no outright majority nationally and in six of the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, a picture independent research bodies broadly share. The Mail and Guardian reported on Friday that a post election ANC and DA coalition is the likely outcome in the places where the two largest parties can together command a majority.
The voters, unusually, say they want exactly that. A Social Research Foundation survey published by The Common Sense found 68 percent of respondents supporting ANC and DA coalition governments in municipalities where neither party secures a majority, against 30 percent opposed. Support was strongest among the two parties’ own voters, at 83 percent of ANC supporters and 77 percent of DA supporters, a rare case of the electorate endorsing the compromise its politicians treat as a last resort.
The arithmetic driving the outcome is the ANC’s long decline without a single beneficiary. Separate polling put national support for the ANC at 32 percent, the DA at 26 percent, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party at 12 percent and the Economic Freedom Fighters at 8 percent, with the ANC’s losses scattering to smaller and leftist alternatives rather than consolidating behind the DA. In Johannesburg, three recent polls disagree on who finishes first but agree on the structure: a hung council, with smaller parties such as ActionSA holding the balance in most scenarios, and an ANC and DA combination the only two party route to a comfortable majority.
Johannesburg is the test case with money attached. The city has cycled through changes of leadership since the ANC first lost its outright majority in 2016, and its water outages and service delivery failures have put municipal competence at the centre of this campaign. Analyst Richard Calland told Business Day that an ANC and DA coalition in the city would hinge on whether the ANC’s national leadership is willing to impose it, and warned that a poor ANC performance could instead produce internal pressure to leave the national government of national unity altogether. Negotiations after the vote must conclude within 14 days, which means the shape of metro government across South Africa will be settled, or visibly unsettled, by mid November.