News24 | Institutional trust for local government declines by 10% in the Western Cape

A poll by the Human Sciences Research Council, commissioned by the Electoral Commission of South Africa, found that in the Western Cape, trust in local government has declined in the last ten years.

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• Trust in local government institutions in the Western Cape has declined to 27%, according to the Human Sciences Research Council.
• This is a 10% drop compared to 2003, when trust in local government institutions stood at 37%.
• There is also a decline in support for democracy in the Western Cape.
• For more political news, visit News24 Politics.

Only 27% of respondents in the Western Cape have institutional trust in local government, a pre-election survey by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) found.

On Wednesday, with less than three weeks before the polls, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) in the Western Cape held a stakeholder event to unpack the HSRC’s 2026 Voter Participation Survey.

The IEC commissioned the survey to gauge voter sentiment ahead of the elections. The poll was conducted between October 2025 and February 2026, with face-to-face interviews across nine provinces.

Dr Derek Davids, the chief research specialist from the HSRC, told the audience that in 2003, trust in local government institutions in the province stood at 37%.

Davids said the findings represented a 10% decline in trust and gave “an indication that people are not feeling happy with what they’re getting” at the coalface of service delivery.

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For several years, Western Cape municipalities often featured at the top of the list for service delivery and audit results.

In the Western Cape, the survey also showed low trust in Parliament. Trust in Parliament is at 25%, while trust in the national government is at 20%.

Another glaring finding was that support for democracy as a system of government had dropped to 46% in the Western Cape ahead of the 4 November local government elections.

This, Davids said, was still significantly higher than in the country’s other provinces. Gauteng recorded the lowest level of support for democracy with just 28%.

However, the Western Cape figure was still a sharp decline from 2015, when it was at 57%, Davids said.

“So it went down from 57% to 46%, but it remains the highest throughout the country,” he said.

In early October, a News24 SABI poll found that among 1 000 Cape Town-registered voters, 63% believed the country is heading in the wrong direction. However, 59% of those said Cape Town was going the right way.

All systems go for the polls

On Wednesday, IEC provincial electoral officer Michael Hendrickse told News24 that the electoral commission was finalising training for its staff ahead of the November vote.

“I think we are as ready as can be in terms of our preparations,” he said.

Hendrickse said the IEC was working to ensure that all ballot papers were finalised, given last week’s Constitutional Court victory by the ANC, which allowed the submission of candidates who were not formally captured by the 28 August deadline.

READ | Mbalula collapses after ConCourt rules for ANC in candidate lists case

While the bungle did not affect the ANC’s lists in the Western Cape, the IEC granted all 33 political parties that could not submit their candidates on time an opportunity to submit their names. This affected eight municipalities in the Western Cape, including Drakenstein and Matzikama, as other parties added candidates to their lists, confirmed Hendrickse.

“We will have those ballot papers ready for delivery, so come the special vote date, which is on 2 November, when we start voting, we’ll be up and running,” he said.

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