South Africa’s municipal elections opened on Wednesday with the machinery of local government itself on trial. Polls opened at 7am (0500 GMT) and, more than four hours later, voting had been largely incident-free. The ballot paper is only part of the story. Across the country, the election is being fought over a more basic question: whether municipalities can deliver water, electricity and other essential services that have grown unreliable under years of unstable governance.
More than 29 million voters are registered, though turnout is an open concern. The last municipal elections, in 2021, drew just 46 percent, and the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, fell below 50 percent support nationally for the first time in those polls. Opinion surveys now suggest it could drop below 40 percent this time.
Voters framed the stakes in practical terms. “I am hoping things will improve this time, especially where we live. What we need most is better service delivery,” Themba Ntuli, a 47-year-old security guard, told Reuters. In Cape Town, Thembinkosi Somana, 50, who was first in line at a polling station in Langa, the city’s oldest township, told AFP: “I want things to change… people must get work. People mustn’t suffer.”
Not everyone was persuaded that the ballot would change anything. In the port city of Gqeberha, Shane Jacob, 26 and unemployed, said: “Voting? Never, not again. I have been voting since 2018, and what did I get? Nothing. My life has not changed; if anything it has gotten worse.”
Meanwhile, President Cyril Ramaphosa, after voting in Johannesburg, acknowledged the pressure on the delivery side. “I have seen the challenges that we face at local government level, but we are determined to rebuild our local government structure,” he said. Local governance has become a persistent weak point for the ANC, which was forced into a coalition with the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties after losing its national majority in 2024.
The operational consequences of fragmented politics are most visible in Johannesburg. The city, South Africa’s commercial hub and long an ANC stronghold, has had seven mayors since 2021 as successive coalition governments collapsed. Residents sometimes endure weeks without water or electricity, while motorists contend with broken traffic lights and pothole-riddled roads. The frustrations are not abstract: Moses Mashaba, a 27-year-old street vendor from Johannesburg’s Soweto township, told AFP he was driven to vote by the sense that “things have been horrible”. “Sometimes we don’t have water or electricity. There is also a high unemployment rate, which has been frustrating,” he said.
Johannesburg is regarded as the largest prize of these polls. Among the ANC’s opponents, the Democratic Alliance’s candidate Helen Zille has run an energetic campaign for mayor, and opinion polls project she will win the most votes but fall short of a majority. With no other party large enough to govern alone, many South African cities are heading for coalition arrangements of the kind that have been partly blamed for failing to deliver basic services, including water and electricity. Sabelo Zulu, a 37-year-old engineer, is among those worried that a tight result could leave many municipalities with hung councils and unstable coalition governments.
By contrast, other metro areas are being watched closely for what they reveal about municipal capacity. Tshwane is home to the administrative capital, Pretoria. eThekwini includes the port city of Durban, where former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party is strong. The DA is heavily favoured to retain control of Cape Town.
The results, due to be announced in full on Sunday after polls close at 9pm (1900 GMT), will shape the political landscape ahead of the 2029 national election and could influence the succession battle within the ANC as Ramaphosa nears the end of his term as party leader in 2027. For readers tracking whether local government actually functions, the analysis at https://www.rfi.fr/en/africa/20261104-south-africa-votes-in-local-elections-as-growing-anger-threatens-anc underlines the central tension: a party still owed loyalty for ending apartheid is now judged chiefly on whether taps run and lights stay on, and growing numbers of voters, even in Johannesburg, have concluded that they too often do not.