The election the cities didn’t see — rural South Africa rewrote our politics

Since Wednesday’s vote the national conversation has largely followed a familiar route: Who will govern Johannesburg? Can Tshwane hold a coalition together? What does the MK party’s showing in eThekwini mean for KwaZulu-Natal? These are all fair questions and must be asked. The metros are home to roughly four in 10 South Africans and much of the economy.

But South Africa has 257 municipal councils, and only eight of them are metros. The other six in 10 South Africans live in secondary cities, small towns, farming districts, and villages in former homelands. That is where the 2026 election did its most surprising work, and it is where much of our analysis has the least to say.

For two decades the conventional reading has been simple: the ANC was losing the cities but could rely on the countryside. Rural voters were treated as a fixed quantity, a reliable base that cushioned urban losses. The 2026 election proved clearly that this truth no longer holds. Rural votes proved that they were no longer a fixed quantity. They weigh, compare, and when credible alternatives are close at hand, they move. To understand where South African politics is going, we have to read the rural story as carefully as we read the metros.

The numbers from the provinces once called ANC heartland are stark. On the provisional ward ballot count, the party’s share fell from 66% to 54% in Limpopo, from 62% to 45% in the Eastern Cape, from 58% to 44% in Mpumalanga and from 55% to 44% in North West. In the Free State it dropped from 50% to 37%. Limpopo is now the only province where the ANC holds more than 50% of the vote. These are not metro numbers. Limpopo, Mpumalanga, North West and the Eastern Cape – outside its two metros – are overwhelmingly made up of small and rural councils. The ANC’s national fall, from 45% in 2021 to about 31%, cannot be explained by Johannesburg or Tshwane alone.

The effect on control is just as sharp. Before the elections, the ANC governed about 105 local municipalities outright. By Saturday morning’s count it was on track to govern just more than 50. By the same point, 109 of the 175 councils already certified at the time of writing this article were hung, and most of those are not metros.

Looking closely one can clearly see that the rural shift is not one story but many, each shaped by place.

In the former Transkei voters turned to parties they know. The UDM roughly tripled its Eastern Cape vote and won 13 of 37 wards in King Sabata Dalindyebo. The PAC took 16% in Mnquma. And the SACP, standing alone for the first time, won 6% of the Eastern Cape vote.

In rural KwaZulu-Natal the MK party became the largest party in eNdumeni, at 32.6% and fell just short of outright majorities in Mandeni and uMshwathi.

In southern Mpumalanga the MK party overtook the ANC in eMkhondo with 41% to 34%.

In North West the ANC lost its majority in small councils such as Mamusa, where its share fell from 55% to 45%.

In the Northern Cape nine of the first 14 councils to finish counting by the time of writing were hung.

But, none of this came without warning; the signals were there, in small councils, for anyone looking to see. In 2021, local civic movements were already breaking through in rural towns. The MPAC16 Civic Movement took nearly 30% of the vote in Maluti-a-Phofung in the Free State. The Siyathemba Community Movement won almost 40% in its Northern Cape municipality. In Setsoto a service delivery forum became the official opposition. Many commentators and national media read these as purely local stories. In hindsight, it was early evidence that rural voters would back whoever they believed would fix their town. 

By-elections said the same. Rural by-elections and small-town civics rarely make national headlines. Yet they are often where a shift in loyalties shows itself first, because local voters judge parties on things they can see: water, roads, clinics and whether the councillor shows up.

Reading the countryside

I argue that there are four reasons the countryside deserves a central place in how we read this 2026 election.

First, it is where most councils are. With 249 of 257 councils outside the metros, the bulk of local government, and of the services residents depend on, is decided there. A collapse of single-party majorities in small councils changes how water, electricity and roads are managed for millions of people.

Second, coalitions are moving into councils least equipped for them. Metros have large budgets and professional administrations that can absorb unstable coalitions. A small rural council with a thin staff and a narrow revenue base has far less room for deadlock. How these councils are governed over the next five years may matter more to residents’ daily lives than the next Johannesburg mayoral vote.

Third, rural voters decide national majorities. The ANC’s 40% in the 2024 national election rested heavily on rural provinces. If the rural base is now divided, as it was on 4 November, the arithmetic for 2029 changes for every party, not just one.

Fourth, rural politics shows what kind of alternatives voters want. In the cities, much of the lost ANC vote went to large national parties. In the countryside it often went to parties and movements with local roots: the UDM, the PAC in the Eastern Cape, MK in predominantly Zulu-speaking areas, civic movements in the Free State and the Northern Cape, the SACP in several provinces. That is a different kind of politics, built on proximity and trust, and it will shape the coalitions that form.

Let me end by noting that none of this diminishes the metros. Their coalitions will shape investor confidence, and their failures in water and electricity are felt far beyond the city limits. But a national analysis built mainly on eight councils misses most of the country. Reading the election well means reading it council by council. It means paying as much attention to a hung council in Makana or Mamusa as to one in Tshwane, and to the PAC’s ward in Mnquma or MK’s near-majority in Mandeni as to the mayoral chain of Johannesburg. It means treating small-town civic movements and rural by-elections as evidence, not footnotes.

The rural voter has shown, in this election, that they are neither a guaranteed base nor a passive audience. They are making careful, local choices that add up to a national shift. Their story is South Africa’s story, and it deserves to be told as such. DM