Five key takeaways from South Africa’s 2026 Local Government Elections

South Africa’s long-dominant African National Congress (ANC), tarnished by years of corruption scandals, is on course for its worst electoral setback yet as results come in from local government elections.

Here are five things to know from the Wednesday vote, which could redefine the future of the party of late liberation icon Nelson Mandela as opposition groups chip away at its base.

Decline of ANC

While still the largest party in South Africa, the ANC is set to secure under 31 percent of the vote nationally and fail to win an outright majority in any of the eight major metros, including Johannesburg and Pretoria.

That represents a drop of roughly 14 percentage points from its 2021 local election performance.

Its support has steadily eroded as voters grow increasingly frustrated with corruption and the party’s failure to tackle unemployment, which tops 34 percent more than three decades after the end of apartheid.

The ANC fell below the symbolic 50-percent threshold in 2021 and lost its parliamentary majority in the 2024 national elections, forcing it into an uneasy national unity government with nine other parties.

The gross mismanagement of some of the municipalities it controls “has superseded the emotional attachment that the liberation struggle afforded the ANC for so many decades”, political analyst Daniel Silke told AFP.

Amanda Gouws, a political scientist at Stellenbosch University, agreed: “People don’t believe the promises the ANC make anymore. People are really fed up.”

DA at a plateau?

The second-largest party, the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA), has gained ground, winning around a quarter of the vote, but remains short of the support it attracted at its 2016 peak.

The party has pulled ahead in several urban contests, including Johannesburg, where its mayoral candidate is 75-year-old Helen Zille, a veteran ANC critic who built her political career in Cape Town.

DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis said on Friday the party had won one million black voters, a long-standing ambition as it seeks to shed its image as a party of the wealthy white elite.

“We are now a mainstream party in every community in the country,” the Cape Town mayor said.

But the DA advance does not amount to a wholesale transfer of ANC voters, analysts cautioned.

Control of municipal councils will still depend on the distribution of seats and the willingness of smaller parties to enter into coalitions.

“The DA seems to have reached some ceiling,” Gouws said.

Political analyst Dirk Kotze offered a more measured assessment: “The DA is not stagnant, but it is also not rising dramatically. In this election, they have grown by five percent and for them that is significant.”

New third force

Led by former president Jacob Zuma – a graft-tainted former ANC stalwart – the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party is contesting the municipal election for the first time since its formation in 2023.

It is set to finish third nationally, overtaking the radical-left Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of Julius Malema, another former ANC star.

The MK Party has been the biggest beneficiary of the fragmentation of the ANC vote, analysts said.

It had been tipped as one of the few parties capable of securing an outright majority in the eastern port city of Durban. But in Zuma’s own back yard, it looks set to fall short and will have to seek coalition partners to govern.

“They didn’t even have to put up one poster because of the draw card of Zuma,” said political analyst Sethulego Matebesi, referring to the 84-year-old’s enduring popularity.

Voter apathy

An estimated 54.5 percent of the country’s 29.2 million registered voters cast ballots, the electoral commission said, up from 46 percent in 2021.

But young voters remain a concern.

“Young people did register to vote but on the day of the elections they did not go and vote and it is the same story: ‘they do not see any changes’,” said Matebesi, a professor at South Africa’s University of the Free State.

Coalitions

With outright majorities elusive in several major cities, the results will usher in complex coalition negotiations as parties bargain to assemble the alliances needed to govern.

Such marriages of convenience have often proved unstable, leaving local administrations consumed by internal wrangling at the expense of basic service delivery.

The national government’s existing coalition arrangements could further complicate negotiations, said Silke.

Voters in Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, would probably prefer to see the DA govern alongside centre-right ActionSA, he said.