The ANC’s failure to register candidates has given neglected communities a rare opportunity to demand more than another political promise, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.

For the people of Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns, the ANC’s candidate list blunder is not primarily a story about the ANC.

It is a story about them.

For years, politics in parts of the Eastern Cape has seemed less like a contest than a permanent condition. The ANC has dominated local government for generation after generation. Yet the basic economic circumstances of many residents remain extraordinarily difficult.

In Ingquza Hill, just 17.6% of households had piped water inside their homes in the 2022 Census. In the 2011 Census, youth unemployment was recorded at 60.9%.

Port St Johns tells much the same story. Only 19% of households had piped water inside their homes in 2022. Its youth unemployment rate was 61% in 2011.

These are not abstract statistics. They describe communities where social grants can become the economic foundation, young people reach adulthood without jobs and the promise of development remains just that, a promise.

Now something extraordinary has happened.

Because the ANC failed to complete the registration of its candidates on time, voters in six municipalities are heading into the 4 November local elections with an electoral map fundamentally different from the one their politicians expected.

The Electoral Court rejected the ANC’s application to restore 181 excluded candidates. The affected municipalities are Ingquza Hill, Port St Johns, Mangaung Metro, uMshwathi, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley. The ANC says it will pursue further legal options.

The consequences are especially dramatic in Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns, where the ANC has no candidates on the ballot.

In 2021, the ANC won 46 of Ingquza Hill’s 64 council seats. It won 31 of the 39 seats in Port St Johns.

The political establishment may spend the next few weeks asking which opposition party will benefit.

That is the wrong question.

The more important question is what happens when the party that has dominated a municipality for decades is suddenly no longer an option.

There is a temptation to regard this merely as an electoral gift to whichever opposition party can capture displaced ANC voters.

But the opportunity is bigger than that.

It allows voters to ask every party seeking their support a more uncomfortable question:

What exactly will you do with this place?

Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns possess assets that most municipalities would envy.

The Wild Coast is one of the country’s great natural assets. Port St Johns describes itself as the centre of Wild Coast tourism, with opportunities around its coastline, beaches, fishing and natural environment.

Yet the surrounding communities remain among the country’s poorest.

That contradiction should embarrass every political party.

The region should not have to choose between development and environmental protection as though the only alternatives were a mine or poverty.

The real challenge is to construct a development model in which local communities share in the economic value of their land and natural resources, whether that value comes from tourism, agriculture, mineral resources, conservation or a combination of them.

Xolobeni illustrates the problem.

For more than 15 years, communities have fought over a proposed titanium mine on the Wild Coast. The dispute has become a national symbol of the conflict between mining, environmental protection, community rights and economic development.

The 2018 Baleni judgment established that communities holding informal land rights must give consent before mining rights can be granted over their land.

But after all those years, the fundamental question remains unanswered:

How do you turn the natural wealth of the Wild Coast into economic opportunity for the people who live there?

That requires political leadership.

Not slogans about transformation. Not promises made at election time. And not another decade of arguing while young people remain unemployed.

The same question is visible further inland in Mangaung.

Bloemfontein should be one of the country’s great inland economic centres. Instead, the metro has been under government intervention since 2019, with the intervention escalated to national level in 2022.

Recent reporting describes deteriorating infrastructure, returned infrastructure grants, water losses, sewage problems and billions of rand in unauthorised expenditure.

The result is not merely damaged roads or unreliable services.

It is lost economic opportunity.

A city cannot attract investors while its infrastructure is deteriorating. Agriculture cannot flourish without functioning roads, water and electricity. Tourism cannot grow when public spaces decay. Businesses cannot create jobs indefinitely when municipal failure becomes another cost of operating.

That is why the candidate list fiasco matters beyond the ANC.

It has unexpectedly forced the question of governance onto the ballot.

The DA will point voters towards uMngeni in KwaZulu Natal as evidence that municipal government can improve within a single electoral cycle.

There is evidence that the municipality’s financial and administrative performance improved after the DA took control in 2021. Its records show consecutive financially unqualified audit outcomes, compared with a qualified outcome in 2020/21. The municipality also says its roads maintenance budget increased from R11 million to R42 million.

Those achievements include political claims that voters should test against municipal records. But the broader lesson does not belong exclusively to the DA.

Municipal performance can change.

That is an important lesson for voters in the six municipalities affected by the ANC’s administrative failure.

They have choices.

Some may choose the DA. Others may choose the EFF, MK or another established or emerging party. Some may choose independents or civic organisations.

The ANC’s absence does not leave an empty ballot. It leaves a more fragmented political marketplace.

Fragmentation carries its own risks.

A party that has never governed a municipality has no municipal record against which voters can judge its promises. A party can campaign brilliantly and still discover that running a municipality requires something different.

It requires competent administrators, functioning revenue systems, credible budgets, infrastructure maintenance, procurement controls and the ability to attract investment.

Voters should therefore not simply ask which party is angry with the ANC.

They should ask which party can run a municipality.

Can it collect revenue and maintain roads and water infrastructure?

Can it produce credible budgets, achieve clean or unqualified audits and stop corruption and waste?

Can it attract businesses and turn a municipality’s natural and economic assets into opportunities for local people?

The ANC’s candidate list failure was an extraordinary political blunder.

For the ANC, it is plainly bad news.

For democracy, however, there is another possibility.

It could become a blessing in disguise, not because it guarantees that an opposition party will govern better, but because it has temporarily broken the assumption that the political status quo is inevitable.

In Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns, voters have suddenly been handed an unusual political laboratory.

The ANC cannot ask them to vote for its candidates.

That means the opposition cannot simply ask voters to vote against the ANC.

They must persuade them to vote for something.

The people of the Wild Coast, Mangaung, uMshwathi, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley do not need another promise that their turn is coming.

They need evidence that somebody knows how to make their turn happen.

That is the real test created by the ANC’s blunder.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will discuss how the ANC’s candidate list blunder has transformed elections in six municipalities. Hear on Thursday why the mistake could give neglected voters a rare chance to demand better government on Sharp Sharp, the politics and business podcast from Scrolla and the Financial Mail.

Pictured above: Vote ANC banners. 

Image source: @MYANC/X

Party levies may offer a cleaner form of political funding, but they become a tool of control when parties can remove representatives who refuse to pay, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.

Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto Wesizwe Party has demonstrated that it can mobilise millions of angry voters. It has not yet demonstrated that it can build, finance and govern a durable political institution.

Two months before the municipal elections, its apparent cash shortage has exposed the gap between the power of Zuma’s name and the weakness of the organisation constructed around it.

MK emerged from the 2024 election with 58 seats in the National Assembly, the official opposition benches and political dominance in KwaZulu Natal. It achieved in a matter of months what many opposition parties have failed to accomplish over decades.

But votes do not automatically create an institution. A functioning party needs reliable income, audited accounts, competent administrators, regional offices and systems capable of paying staff and contesting thousands of municipal wards.

MK appears to have built its electoral machinery faster than its financial foundations.

Its latest confrontation with its own public representatives illustrates the problem. Zuma and party treasurer Brian Molefe reportedly instructed KwaZulu Natal MPLs to settle outstanding party levies within seven days. Failure to pay would, they warned, be treated as an automatic resignation.

One representative was reportedly told that R96,000 was outstanding.

This is more than a story about MK struggling for cash. It exposes an overlooked feature of South African politics. Taxpayers pay the salaries of MPs, MPLs and councillors. Political parties claim a share of those salaries, while controlling whether the representatives remain party members and retain their seats.

The practice is not unique to MK. It is widespread across the political spectrum.

The Electoral Commission’s latest political funding report shows that the EFF collected R50.9-million from membership fees and levies during the 2024/25 financial year. The ANC collected R49.7-million, the DA R36.7-million, the IFP R23.8-million, the Patriotic Alliance R8.5-million and ActionSA R6-million. MK reported R2.5-million from the same category.

These are significant sums, particularly for smaller parties. Membership fees and levies represented about 87% of the EFF’s total income, 56% of the PA’s, 38% of the IFP’s and 34% of MK’s. For the ANC and DA, which have larger and more diverse funding networks, the proportions were about 14% and 18%.

The figures demonstrate why public representatives are important financial assets to their parties. Every parliamentary or council seat brings political influence, public funding and a potential monthly contribution from the person occupying it.

There is nothing inherently improper about this arrangement. Political parties are expensive institutions to operate. They employ staff, maintain offices, commission research, communicate with voters and contest elections. Asking representatives who gained office through the party to contribute towards its upkeep can be defended as organisational solidarity.

Levies may also present less risk than dependence on a handful of wealthy donors expecting access or policy influence. Money collected from party members and representatives can help build a more self-sufficient organisation.

The problem arises when a contribution becomes the price of retaining public office.

Former BOSA Gauteng MPL Ayanda Allie was required to contribute 10% of her salary to the party. She acknowledged withholding the payment but said she was paying for constituency travel and accommodation herself because BOSA would not cover those expenses.

The disagreement formed part of the breakdown between Allie and BOSA. She was expelled and later joined ActionSA.

Her case raises an important question. If a representative must choose between paying a party levy and financing work among constituents, to whom is that representative ultimately accountable: voters, the legislature or the party treasurer?

South Africa’s proportional representation system gives party headquarters enormous power over the answer. Most legislators do not hold constituencies that they won in their own names. They enter legislatures through party lists and ordinarily lose their seats if they lose membership of the party that nominated them.

For an ordinary national MP, that can mean losing an annual remuneration package worth about R1.32-million.

The result is a formidable enforcement mechanism. A demand from the party is never an ordinary invoice. Behind it stands the possibility of disciplinary action, expulsion and unemployment.

Zuma’s attempt to treat nonpayment as an “automatic resignation” takes this logic to an extreme. A political party cannot simply convert a disputed debt into a voluntary resignation by declaring it so. But it can follow its disciplinary processes, expel a member and replace that person with another candidate from its list.

That turns party finance into an instrument of political control.

The Electoral Commission’s reporting system does not allow the public to see the full picture. It combines ordinary membership subscriptions with levies paid by public representatives. It is therefore impossible to determine from the published totals how much came from ordinary members and how much was collected from taxpayer funded political salaries.

Voters also cannot easily establish the rates charged by different parties, whether levies are calculated on gross or after tax income, whether ministers pay more than ordinary MPs, or what sanctions apply when payments fall into arrears.

The ANC’s accounts establish that it received R49.7-million in membership fees and levies. They do not reveal what proportion of an MP’s or councillor’s salary the party claims.

The EFF’s R50.9-million is even more striking, but the published category does not show whether that money came mainly from public representatives or the wider membership.

This is a material weakness in a disclosure system intended to reveal who finances political power.

There are other gaps. Donations below the disclosure threshold appear as aggregated amounts, while loans can provide parties with substantial funding without immediately being treated as donations. Income from commercial activities, affiliated organisations and benefits provided in kind can also make the real source of political influence difficult to follow.

MK demonstrates the other side of this limited transparency. Its audited statements recorded total income of just R7.2-million for 2024/25 outside the separate public funding system, including only R380,555 in disclosed donations above the threshold. Yet it ran a national campaign, established structures across the country and became South Africa’s third largest party.

Those figures invite legitimate questions about how its campaign was financed and why a party that won millions of votes is now pursuing its own MPLs for arrears shortly before a crucial election.

MK has not been declared legally bankrupt. But an apparent cash shortage could damage its municipal campaign. Local elections require money for deposits, transport, posters, polling agents, rallies, communications and candidate support across thousands of wards. Zuma’s popularity cannot pay organisers or create reliable financial controls.

The deeper lesson extends beyond MK. South Africa needs political parties that are financially sustainable without being captured by large donors. Representative levies can contribute to that objective, but they should be transparent.

Parties should publish their levy schedules. The Electoral Commission should report membership subscriptions separately from contributions by public representatives. Loans, arrears and forgiven debts should be disclosed clearly. Parties should also distinguish genuine disciplinary misconduct from disputes about money.

MK’s difficulties have opened a useful window into the hidden economics of South African politics. The state funds parties directly. It pays the representatives whom those parties nominate. Parties then reclaim part of those salaries and retain the power to remove representatives who do not comply.

A levy may be one of the cleaner ways of financing a political organisation. But when the organisation demanding the money also controls party membership, discipline and ultimately the seat, the levy becomes more than a contribution.

It becomes the price of remaining in public office.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will discuss how party levies finance South African politics and give party leaders power over public representatives on this week’s Sharp Sharp, the politics and business podcast from Scrolla and the Financial Mail.

Pictured above: Jacob Zuma. 

Image source: uMkhonto Wesizwe/X

The DA says cooperation with the ANC protects stability, but voters may begin to question whether the party is replacing the ANC or preserving it, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.

Helen Zille once warned voters that supporting a smaller opposition party was a circuitous way of returning the ANC to power. Two years into the government of national unity, that warning presents an awkward question for her own party: has a vote for the DA also become a vote for the ANC?

The allegation is not entirely fair, but neither is it frivolous.

South Africans did not remove the ANC from power in 2024. They did something more constitutionally precise and politically consequential. They removed its majority and ended its right to govern alone.

The ANC remained the largest party, but it could not elect Cyril Ramaphosa again, pass budgets or form a government without opposition support. The DA used its parliamentary strength to keep Ramaphosa in the presidency and the ANC at the centre of government.

In KwaZulu Natal, where the MK Party emerged as the largest party but fell short of a majority, the DA joined an IFP led provincial coalition that also retained the ANC in government. In both cases, the DA helped construct a governing centre designed principally to exclude MK and the EFF.

There were defensible reasons for doing so.

Businesses, investors and financial markets feared that an ANC coalition with MK and the EFF would weaken fiscal discipline, constitutional institutions and property rights. It could also have disrupted economic reforms in energy, logistics and public administration just as some were beginning to produce results.

The GNU offered continuity without returning the ANC to unchecked power. It promised constitutional stability, more disciplined economic management and an opportunity for the DA and other parties to constrain the ANC from inside government.

That stability has economic value. Investment decisions involving factories, mines, renewable energy projects and infrastructure are made over years, not electoral news cycles. Investors need confidence that budgets will pass, contracts will be respected and policy will not change whenever political pressure rises.

Improved electricity supply, structural reforms, South Africa’s removal from the Financial Action Task Force grey list and the country’s first sovereign credit rating upgrade in two decades have all lifted the economic mood. The GNU cannot claim sole credit for these developments, but its survival has reduced the political uncertainty surrounding them.

The DA can therefore argue that it did not betray its mandate. It used that mandate to prevent a riskier government, protect the constitutional order and pull policy towards the economic centre.

But a justification that worked after the 2024 election cannot give the DA a permanent exemption from explaining what it has become.

Is it still an opposition party seeking to replace the ANC, or is it becoming the ANC’s indispensable constitutional insurance policy?

The local government elections on 4 November will force an answer. The latest Ipsos survey suggests several metros could again produce councils where no party has a majority. It places the ANC at 31% and the DA at 27% in Johannesburg, with the DA ahead in Tshwane and MK dominant in eThekwini.

In April, Zille appeared categorical that the DA would not work with the ANC, MK or EFF in Johannesburg. By July, her position had become more pragmatic.

“You don’t know what coalition you’re going to have until after the elections because you don’t know what options you’re going to get,” she said. “If we don’t get to 50% plus one, we will look at the options and we will take the least bad option. They will all be bad, but we will take the least bad.”

DA leader Geordin Hill Lewis made the underlying calculation even clearer.

“We went into government with the ANC to prevent the MK Party and the EFF from taking government, but it might not replicate itself in other areas,” he said. “We will have to look at the least worst option everywhere, and it will be different everywhere.”

These statements leave the door open to agreements with the ANC where the DA decides that every other possible arrangement would be worse. The GNU may not be replicated across the metros, but its governing logic could be.

For the DA, that logic is simple. When voters produce no majority, the party will choose the arrangement it considers least damaging, even if that means keeping the ANC in office.

The DA would not need to enter a formal coalition to keep the ANC in municipal power. It could support an ANC administration on budgets and motions of confidence, tolerate an ANC led minority government or reach agreements on individual issues while remaining formally in opposition.

Ekurhuleni has already shown how blurred these lines can become. The DA helped the city pass its budget after extracting concessions, even while describing the administration as a failing ANC led coalition. It was not a coalition agreement, but it showed that political cooperation does not require parties to share executive positions.

The elections also offer the GNU parties an opportunity to honour an overlooked commitment in their founding statement of intent: “stabilising local government, effective cooperative governance.”

This matters because the credibility of the GNU cannot be separated from municipal performance. National reforms will mean little if the cities responsible for development approvals, water, electricity, roads and revenue collection continue to deteriorate.

The metros control enormous budgets, employ thousands of people and oversee the infrastructure on which the urban economy depends.

Johannesburg alone accounts for about 15% of national GDP. In July, the National Treasury temporarily withheld equitable share transfers from Johannesburg and 68 other municipalities because they had failed to meet financial obligations and properly address unlawful expenditure. Across all municipalities, irregular expenditure reached R40.14 billion in the 2024 to 2025 financial year.

Coalition negotiations determine who controls procurement, infrastructure spending and valuable municipal land. They affect whether businesses receive electricity, developers obtain approvals and cities can collect revenue or service their debt.

Billions in public and private capital will be needed to reverse urban decline. Johannesburg wants private investors to help reclaim derelict and hijacked buildings in the city centre and turn them into safe residential, commercial and mixed use properties.

Similar partnerships will be required to repair water systems, increase electricity capacity, improve transport networks and regenerate declining business districts.

Private investors will not commit that capital if mayors and finance committee chairs can be removed every few months. Urban renewal also cannot succeed if billing systems collapse, planning applications remain trapped in bureaucracy and criminal syndicates influence municipal administration.

Business therefore wants at municipal level what it initially welcomed nationally: stability, credible financial management and a broad political centre capable of making decisions.

The “least bad option”, however, cannot mean preserving ANC power regardless of how decisively voters reject its municipal record. A grand coalition that merely divides positions and procurement between the two largest parties would reproduce the political protectionism that voters tried to end.

Any agreement between the ANC and DA would require strict conditions. These should include a public coalition contract, professional appointments, measurable service delivery targets, protection for officials who enforce financial rules and automatic consequences for corruption or missed targets.

The political cost to the DA would nevertheless be substantial, particularly among black middle class voters it needs to attract.

These voters may be alienated from ANC corruption and administrative failure without being natural DA supporters. The GNU gives the DA an opportunity to demonstrate competence in national government, but it also blurs the alternative the party offers them.

The DA must prove that cooperation is conditional, productive and directed towards reform. It needs visible achievements, clear limits and a convincing account of how it intends eventually to replace the ANC rather than remain its permanent junior partner.

November will therefore determine more than who runs Johannesburg, Tshwane and other contested councils. It will show whether the GNU’s promise to stabilise local government can be translated into functioning cities, and whether the national coalition was an exceptional compromise or the foundation of a new governing establishment.

If cooperation with the ANC is sometimes the DA’s least bad option, it must say so honestly and explain the conditions. Otherwise, Zille’s old warning will acquire a damaging new meaning. The shortest route back to the ANC government may run not through a small party, but through the DA itself.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will discuss whether cooperation between the DA and ANC could extend into South Africa’s major cities after the local elections in this week’s episode of Sharp Sharp, the politics and business podcast from Scrolla and the Financial Mail.

Pictured above: Helen Zille. 

Image source: @Our_DA/X

The 282 to 101 defeat of the EFF’s motion against Speaker Thoko Didiza shows the Government of National Unity is growing stronger, and South Africa now needs that stability to deliver real reform, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.

The decisive defeat of the Economic Freedom Fighters’ motion of no confidence in National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza last week was more than routine parliamentary theatre.

The EFF did not get close.

The 282 to 101 vote showed that, despite its internal tensions, the Government of National Unity can still close ranks when political stability and the integrity of key institutions are at stake. In a political landscape defined by fragmentation, that resilience has become one of the most important stabilising forces in South African public life.

The GNU — the broad coalition the ANC formed with the DA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus and others after losing its parliamentary majority in the 2024 election for the first time since 1994 — continues to see its parties disagree over policy, personalities and the exercise of executive power. But they are showing an increasing ability to contain those differences without allowing every dispute to become a threat to the government itself.

The vote was about more than Didiza. It demonstrated that the GNU is becoming stronger as a framework for managing disagreement, protecting institutions and isolating political forces that would pull the country away from its reform programme.

Not all 282 MPs who opposed the motion belong to GNU parties. But that makes the result more significant. Alongside the ANC, DA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance and Freedom Front Plus were ActionSA, Build One South Africa, Rise Mzansi, the PAC and Al Jama-ah. The parliamentary centre extended well beyond the formal government. The EFF was supported by the MK Party, African Transformation Movement and a handful of smaller parties — a substantial bloc, but one confined to roughly a quarter of the National Assembly.

The EFF accused Didiza of protecting President Cyril Ramaphosa after she decided not to oppose his court application to halt the Phala Phala impeachment committee’s proceedings. Phala Phala refers to the scandal that began in February 2020 when more than R10-million in foreign currency was stolen from Ramaphosa’s game farm and the theft was not properly reported to the police. An independent panel later found there was a case to answer, and Parliament has been trying to establish a full inquiry ever since. The DA also disagreed with elements of Didiza’s approach. But DA chief whip Glynnis Breytenbach drew an important distinction between criticising a decision and finding sufficient grounds to remove the Speaker.

That distinction is a sign of institutional maturity. GNU membership did not require the DA to pretend Didiza had acted perfectly. It required the party to judge whether the threshold for removing the head of the National Assembly had been met. It concluded that it had not.

The vote showed that disagreement inside the GNU does not have to result in governmental collapse. This would have been considered optimistic two years ago.

When the GNU was formed after the ANC lost its majority in 2024, many expected it to be short-lived. The ANC and DA differed on national health insurance, expropriation, education, empowerment, foreign policy and the size and role of the state. The budget and a proposed VAT increase — which would have raised the tax on goods and services from 15% to 15.5% — later brought the arrangement close to breaking point. Yet the GNU survived. The VAT proposal was withdrawn, the parties absorbed the political damage and the government continued. The partners have gradually discovered that compromise is not surrender and that disagreement need not become divorce.

This matters greatly to South African business and investors. They supported the GNU not because they expected the ANC and DA to become ideological allies, but because the alternative was far more dangerous. An ANC arrangement with MK and the EFF could have threatened fiscal discipline, property rights, central bank independence and the opening of network industries to private participation. By contrast, the GNU offered continuity at the Treasury and a chance to accelerate reforms in electricity, freight rail, ports, water, digital communications and public administration.

Businesses can price policy risk. They struggle to price political chaos.

That does not mean South African business is satisfied with Ramaphosa. Some business leaders have lost patience with the slow pace of implementation, weak consequence management and the president’s reluctance to confront entrenched interests. Reform has been painfully slow, investment remains inadequate and the benefits have not yet translated into sufficient economic growth or jobs.

But business can be disappointed in Ramaphosa while remaining invested in the GNU. Increasingly, the coalition rather than the president alone is becoming the guarantor of reform. The institutional arrangement may prove more valuable than the individual who helped establish it.

The GNU’s stability is also important to the work of rebuilding the state. The Madlanga Commission — a judicial inquiry into how criminal networks may have penetrated the police and other law enforcement structures — is continuing its work. The Zondo Commission, which investigated state capture under former president Jacob Zuma, has completed its work and some of its recommendations are being put into practice. A stable governing centre reduces the risk that every damaging revelation becomes a trigger for the collapse of government. It allows commissions to complete their work and gives the NPA, the Hawks, the SIU and the courts political space to act.

The next responsibility of the GNU must be to protect the institutions whose independence will determine whether state capture can recur — the NPA, police, Crime Intelligence, the Hawks, the State Security Agency, state-owned companies and the Auditor-General. It must also protect whistle-blowers, who continue to carry an enormous personal risk for exposing the theft of public money.

Both MK and the EFF have a democratic right to organise, contest elections and hold the government accountable. Their voters must be respected. But neither party has demonstrated that it would strengthen the constitutional institutions on which economic recovery depends. Keeping them out of executive power must happen through democratic persuasion and credible performance, not through an anti-democratic cartel. The GNU will retain legitimacy only if it governs better, protects opposition rights and allows voters to judge it freely.

The next great test will come after the 4 November municipal elections. Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay may again produce hung councils where no single party wins enough seats to govern alone. If GNU principles are extended to these cities, South Africa could replace unstable transactional coalitions with broad agreements centred on financial recovery and service delivery.

For business, functioning metros are not a secondary governance issue. These cities contain the country’s principal economic infrastructure. No national reform programme can succeed while businesses face water outages, failing roads, incorrect bills, collapsing sewage systems and unstable municipal administrations.

The country needs the GNU to endure beyond the 2029 national election — not necessarily in its current form or under its current leaders, but as a governing principle. South Africa’s post-majority future will require parties to cooperate across ideological lines, protect institutions and accept that no single organisation owns the state.

Stability is not an end in itself. It is the platform from which reform, investment and employment can grow.

The Didiza vote showed that the centre is holding. The challenge now is to use that stability to produce functioning cities, faster reforms, rising investment and jobs. If the GNU can do that, it will become more than a temporary response to an inconclusive election. It could become the foundation of South Africa’s democratic recovery.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will go deeper on the GNU’s resilience, the Didiza vote and what it means for South Africa ahead of November in this week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from Scrolla and the Financial Mail. 

Pictured above: Thoko Didiza. 

Image source: ActionSA

The Mark Burke affair tests the DA’s most valuable political asset, its reputation for clean government, at the worst possible moment before November, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics. 

The Democratic Alliance has built its election campaign around a simple promise: where the DA governs, government works.

That promise is more important to the party than almost any individual policy. Many voters may disagree with the DA on land reform, black economic empowerment, affirmative action or public healthcare. But they are prepared to consider voting for it because they associate the party with cleaner administration, functioning services and consequences for wrongdoing.

With municipal elections less than three months away, that reputation is now being tested from within.

The controversy surrounding DA MP Mark Burke could hardly have arrived at a worse time for party leader Geordin Hill-Lewis. Burke was the DA’s finance spokesperson and one of its brightest parliamentary recruits. He served on the Standing Committee on Finance, Parliament’s principal watchdog over taxation, government revenue and the financial system. He was also a prominent figure in the DA’s campaign against the proposed VAT increase in 2025, serving as the party’s parliamentary point man and using his technical competence to challenge the Treasury in its own language.

Burke has a PhD in econometrics from Cambridge University, an MPhil in technology policy and a master’s degree in computer engineering. That combination made him an obvious choice as finance spokesperson. It also makes his fall from the finance benches especially damaging.

The South African Reserve Bank is investigating alleged exchange-control contraventions involving Kastelo, the fintech and cryptocurrency business Burke co-founded. The allegations concern transactions valued at about R4-billion. Burke denies wrongdoing. He says he left the company’s operations when he entered politics and took steps to recuse himself from parliamentary matters involving the Reserve Bank. No final finding has been made that either Burke or Kastelo broke the law.

The immediate political problem was nevertheless unavoidable. A politician cannot credibly oversee the Reserve Bank and the country’s financial system while the bank is investigating a company he founded and from which he may still benefit. Conflict-of-interest rules do not exist only to punish proven criminality. They protect institutions from the perception that private interests may influence public responsibilities.

The DA initially appeared inclined to defend Burke on the grounds that no competent authority had found him guilty. That was legally defensible but politically tone-deaf. Hill-Lewis’s leadership eventually made the correct decision — Burke was removed from the finance committee and replaced as finance spokesperson. But the delay allowed the ANC and other parties to portray the move as reluctant damage control rather than the automatic application of principle.

The matter is far from over. The Reserve Bank investigation continues. The ANC has called for a parliamentary ethics investigation and laid a criminal complaint. Questions remain about Burke’s financial interest in Kastelo, his declarations to Parliament and whether his recusals covered every relevant meeting.

The danger for the DA is that the Burke affair does not stand alone.

It follows controversy over Resolve Communications, the lobbying company founded by former DA leader Tony Leon. Former DA figures have alleged that Resolve used its political connections to secure access to DA ministers and advance the interests of private clients. Resolve has denied improper conduct. Daily Maverick has also reported overlaps between the parliamentary work of DA MP Kabelo Kgobisa-Ngcaba, a former Resolve executive, and the interests of Resolve clients campaigning for changes to SIM card regulation. No finding has been made that she was paid or instructed to pursue those issues.

But elections are rarely decided by the precision of lawyers. Voters respond to impressions and patterns.

Burke and Resolve risk creating the impression of a party in which commercially connected insiders enjoy privileged access to Parliament and government. That would be deeply damaging to a DA that has spent years attacking the ANC’s networks of political influence, state contracts and connected enrichment. The DA’s defence may be that its people are better qualified and its processes cleaner. But conflicts of interest do not become acceptable because the participants wear suits, possess advanced degrees or communicate through professional lobbying companies.

This does not mean Burke is corrupt or that Resolve broke the law. It means the DA must apply the same suspicion to relationships involving its own insiders that it applies to ANC politicians and politically connected businesspeople.

That standard matters especially because the DA has appointed itself Parliament’s ethics policeman. It has taken ministers to court, demanded resignations and accused the ANC of protecting compromised politicians. It is also free to continue supporting the Phala Phala impeachment process against President Ramaphosa.

Removing Burke actually strengthens the DA’s position on Phala Phala. It demonstrates that stepping aside from a sensitive responsibility is not the same as a declaration of guilt. The more difficult question is whether the DA will apply that principle consistently.

MK and the EFF cannot convincingly demand standards from Burke that they refuse to apply to their own leaders. But their hypocrisy is not a defence available to the DA. A party promising something better cannot measure itself against the lowest standard in Parliament.

Hill-Lewis is selling the DA as a government-in-waiting. His campaign asks voters to look at Cape Town, compare it with Johannesburg or Ekurhuleni, and choose competence over decay. That message could attract urban black voters frustrated by failing municipalities even when they remain suspicious of parts of the DA’s policy programme. For these voters, a functioning government can outweigh ideological differences.

But that bargain depends on trust. If the DA begins to look like another vehicle for connected insiders, voters will have less reason to overlook its positions on race, redress and inequality.

Burke may ultimately be cleared. Resolve may continue to insist it did nothing improper. But Hill-Lewis cannot wait for court judgments before protecting his party’s central political asset.

The DA’s good-governance brand is not self-sustaining. It must be defended most fiercely when doing so is inconvenient, embarrassing and costly to the party itself.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose spoke on the Mark Burke affair and what it means for the DA’s election campaign in last week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from the Financial Mail and Scrolla. 

Pictured above: Mark Burke.

Image source: @Our_DA

Eight years of the New Dawn ends at the ballot box, as Ramaphosa enters November weaker than ever, surrounded by Zuma, Phala Phala and a fractured alliance, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics. 

Cyril Ramaphosa enters the 4 November municipal elections weaker than at any point since he became ANC president.

The New Dawn is dead. The alliance is fractured. Jacob Zuma’s MK Party is advancing on ANC strongholds. Ramaphosa’s main lieutenant in KwaZulu-Natal has been compromised by evidence before the Madlanga Commission. And his Phala Phala impeachment battle is still alive.

The numbers are even more damning. The ANC won 57.5% in the 2019 national election, fell to about 46% in the 2021 municipal elections and collapsed to 40.18% in 2024. It has not recovered in a single election under Ramaphosa.

November will therefore be more than a contest for control of municipalities. It will be a referendum on eight years of the New Dawn — and on Ramaphosa’s promise to rescue the ANC from corruption, division and decline.

A poor result will not automatically remove him from the Union Buildings. But it could destroy what remains of his authority, accelerate the succession battle and leave him serving out his term as a lame-duck president.

This could be Ramaphosa’s Waterloo.

When he took over from Zuma in 2018, Ramaphosa offered moral relief after a decade of state capture. The language of the New Dawn, Thuma Mina and renewal persuaded voters that a respectable businessman with liberation credentials could clean up the state and restore the ANC. The party received 57.5% in 2019. It was already down from the 62.15% achieved under Zuma in 2014, but Ramaphosa’s personal appeal helped the party avoid a more severe punishment.

That was the high point.

In 2021, ANC support fell to about 46%, taking the party below 50% nationally for the first time. In 2024 it collapsed to 40.18% and lost its parliamentary majority. No election conducted under Ramaphosa has produced an ANC recovery. Each one has established a new electoral floor.

It would be inaccurate to describe his presidency as achieving nothing. His administration supported the Zondo Commission, restored some credibility to institutions damaged by state capture and introduced important reforms in electricity, logistics and public administration. Load shedding has eased and parts of the state are more stable than they were under Zuma.

But elections are not decided in government reports or at international investor conferences. They are decided by voters who cannot find work, businesses forced to provide their own water and electricity, and township families surrounded by sewage, potholes, crime and uncollected rubbish. The New Dawn promised ethical government and renewal. Instead, South Africans have watched commissions produce reports while politically connected officials remain in office. Ramaphosa may have repaired parts of the state. He has failed to restore public trust in the party controlling it.

He also enters this campaign without the political machinery that supported previous ANC presidents.

The SACP will contest the municipal elections independently and has been excluded from ANC campaign structures and candidate lists. The ANC has warned members who also belong to the SACP that they may not campaign against ANC candidates. Cosatu is trying to hold the alliance together, but loyalties inside the labour federation are divided. For the first time, an ANC president must campaign not only against opposition parties but against sections of the political machinery that once campaigned for the ANC.

The biggest threat comes from another former ally.

The MK Party is not simply an opposition party. It is a rival version of the ANC, built around Zuma, liberation history and resentment of Ramaphosa’s leadership. MK offers disillusioned ANC supporters a way to punish the current leadership without abandoning the political tradition with which they identify. The party destroyed the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal in 2024 and is now attempting to expand in Mpumalanga, Gauteng, the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. Its elevation of Duduzane Zuma may be designed to reach younger voters while preparing the movement for life beyond his father.

An angry voter does not need to believe MK will govern better. The voter needs only to believe the ANC deserves punishment.

Ramaphosa’s problems are particularly severe in KwaZulu-Natal. Neither he nor ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has demonstrated an ability to compete with Zuma’s emotional hold over significant parts of the province. Senzo Mchunu, who was supposed to be one of Ramaphosa’s strongest provincial lieutenants, has been seriously compromised by allegations before the Madlanga Commission — including interference in policing, the disbanding of an investigative team and sharing a confidential report in violation of protocol. Mchunu denies wrongdoing and the commission has not made final findings. But the ANC cannot deploy him as the face of Ramaphosa’s clean-government project while a judicial commission examines whether he undermined law enforcement.

Ramaphosa’s own claim to ethical leadership is again threatened by Phala Phala. The public impeachment hearings remain temporarily suspended while the Western Cape High Court considers his attempt to review and set aside the independent panel’s report. He has won time, not exoneration. The court battle could accompany him into the campaign — a president who promised accountability, fighting to prevent an impeachment inquiry from proceeding.

The ANC’s response is to rely again on Ramaphosa’s personal stature and the party’s liberation history.

But this is a municipal election. It should be fought on the records of local candidates who can point to clean audits, reliable water, repaired roads and growing local economies. The ANC has not made the excellence of its mayoral candidates the centre of its campaign. In many municipalities, it cannot campaign on a successful record.

The party therefore returns to its oldest argument: trust the ANC because it liberated you.

That appeal becomes weaker with every election. Millions of young voters were born after apartheid. They respect liberation history but do not experience it as an answer to unemployment, unaffordable transport or a broken sewer outside the family home. Liberation history explains why the ANC was trusted. It cannot indefinitely explain why it should continue to be trusted after the services stop working.

The ANC’s crisis is not a shortage of plans. Its new manifesto will probably promise professional municipalities, better-qualified officials, ring-fenced revenue and action against corruption. Its problem is that voters have heard all of this before. The crisis is the disappearance of reasons to believe the next plan will actually be implemented.

Ramaphosa arrived as the man who would save the ANC from Zuma. Eight years later, Zuma leads the movement taking ANC strongholds from him. The communists are campaigning separately. Organised labour is divided. His most important KZN lieutenant is compromised. His own impeachment process remains unresolved.

The New Dawn did not end in a dramatic sunset. It faded election by election.

November 4 will show whether Ramaphosa can finally arrest the decline — or whether this is the battlefield on which his authority inside the ANC disappears.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will go deeper on the ANC’s November crisis and what the elections mean for Ramaphosa’s political future in this week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from Scrolla and the Financial Mail.

The DA is promising what the ANC promised and failed to deliver, and the question is whether different hands can fix the same broken system, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics. 

The Democratic Alliance launched its local government election manifesto on Saturday with a promise to rescue South Africa’s collapsing municipalities by bringing in the private sector.

Party leader Geordin Hill-Lewis says private companies will help municipalities provide water, electricity and waste services through transparent tender processes. The model will be introduced in municipalities won by the DA after the 4 November elections. The party promises public-private partnerships, professionally managed utilities, ring-fenced service revenue and performance-based contracts.

It sounds modern, practical and business-friendly. It also sounds remarkably similar to what the ANC has been promising and not implementing.

The ANC’s 2021 manifesto promised professional municipalities, reliable services, partnerships with business and action against corruption. The ANC-led government’s Operation Vulindlela is already promoting professionally managed water and electricity utilities, private-sector participation and the ring-fencing of municipal trading-service revenue.

The DA is therefore not proposing a radically different municipal economic model. It is offering many of the same instruments — private operators, tenders, ring-fenced income and outside expertise — with a promise that it will administer them more efficiently and honestly.

In other words, the DA is offering the same plumbing with a different plumber.

That does not necessarily make it a bad policy. South Africa’s municipalities require more capital and technical expertise than many of them currently possess. Water systems are leaking, electricity networks are collapsing and sewage plants are failing. Years of cadre deployment and the departure of experienced engineers have hollowed out municipal administrations. Private investment may be unavoidable if these systems are to be rebuilt quickly. The question is whether private participation will help municipalities regain their capacity or make them permanently dependent on contractors.

Critics are already saying the DA seeks to replace black tenderpreneurs with white companies. The DA campaigns against race-based procurement and wants to replace BEE preferences with a model based on economic disadvantage, job creation and value for money. But in an economy where established capital and technical capacity remain disproportionately white-owned, removing race-conscious preferences could redirect municipal spending towards established white businesses while being presented as colour-blind professionalism.

A DA municipality cannot simply replace national legislation with party policy. Until BEE laws change, its councils remain bound by the Constitution, procurement legislation and the MFMA. Transparent noncompliance would still be noncompliance.

What the DA says it opposes is tenderpreneurship — contracts inflated to reward political allies, specifications written for preferred bidders, payment for work never completed and officials who face no consequences. Its manifesto promises to publish tender awards, contract prices and premiums paid above the lowest qualifying bid, alongside strict performance agreements and greater disclosure of supplier performance.

These are welcome commitments. But transparency alone does not make a contract affordable or a contractor competent.

Johannesburg offers a sobering warning.

The city already relies extensively on private companies, yet its infrastructure continues to deteriorate. Johannesburg Water awarded a contract worth at least R263-million to two little-known companies to supply 70 water tankers. An amaBhungane investigation raised questions about the bidders and the peculiar calculations used to compare their prices. The High Court subsequently declared the tender invalid, although Johannesburg Water appealed.

The tanker economy reveals the danger of outsourcing municipal failure. When companies earn millions delivering emergency water, broken pipes and empty reservoirs become commercially valuable. The contractor makes money because the municipal system does not work. Failure is no longer merely a crisis. It becomes a business model.

This is the central weakness in the DA’s manifesto. It is easy to promise a partnership with the private sector. It is much harder to ensure that the municipality — and ultimately the resident — receives value for money.

A genuine public-private partnership transfers meaningful financial and operational risk to the private company. The contractor should be paid for delivering measurable outcomes, not simply for supplying equipment or hours. A badly constructed partnership is merely a bigger and longer tender. It can lock a municipality into inflated prices, poor service and dependence on a monopoly provider for decades.

The DA’s proposed pre-approved supplier panels also deserve scrutiny. Panels can reduce delays by allowing municipalities to select contractors from a vetted list. But they can also restrict competition and create a protected circle of companies that receive work repeatedly. A panel is only as clean as the officials who constitute it, allocate the work, approve price increases and verify that services were delivered.

Across Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, the DA’s programme is broadly consistent: stabilise finances, ring-fence water and electricity income, repair infrastructure, appoint skilled officials and bring in private capital where municipal capacity is inadequate.

But the DA cannot campaign as if it has never occupied the mayoral offices in these cities. It led Tshwane for much of the period after 2016 and headed administrations in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni after 2021. Coalition chaos disrupted those governments, but it must explain why its earlier periods in power did not leave these cities with stronger institutions — and how its new partnerships will differ from the outsourcing arrangements already consuming municipal budgets.

The GNU is also blurring the ideological lines between the two parties. The ANC has moved towards private power generation, private participation in rail and ports and private investment in water infrastructure. The DA, now sharing national power with the ANC, is embracing similar partnerships at municipal level. This does not mean the DA has adopted ANC policies. It may instead show that both parties have accepted the scale of the crisis and arrived at the same limited range of solutions.

The real election contest may therefore not be between public provision and privatisation, or even between competing policy models.

It will be a contest over credibility.

The ANC says it can renew itself and finally implement the reforms it has promised for years. The DA says the same tools will work if placed in cleaner and more capable hands.

That is a potentially persuasive offer. But if the DA cannot prevent its private partners from becoming the next tanker barons and tender millionaires, its municipal rescue plan will reproduce the system it claims it has come to replace.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will go deeper on the DA’s municipal manifesto and whether private sector partnerships will actually fix South Africa’s broken cities in this week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from Scrolla and Currency. 

Pictured above: Geordin Hill-Lewis stage now sharing the party’s plan for towns and cities that work for all. 

Image source: @Our_DA

The Freedom Front Plus has discovered an unexpected political asset in Pieter Groenewald. Black admiration for his performance as Minister of Correctional Services has given the party attention it could never buy, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics.

The Freedom Front Plus has discovered an unexpected political asset in Pieter Groenewald.

Black admiration for his performance as Minister of Correctional Services has given the party attention it could never buy. But it remains unclear whether “Nangu umlungu” is the beginning of a multiracial political realignment or simply a social-media protest against the ANC.

Groenewald has done what no FF Plus campaign has managed in 32 years: he has made some black South Africans curious about an Afrikaner party.

His growing popularity reflects the emergence of a frustrated voter who is tired of excuses, blame-shifting, corruption and maladministration. This voter is becoming less interested in the race of a government leader and more interested in whether that leader can do the job.

For years, failures in government have been blamed on apartheid, budget shortages, uncooperative officials, hostile courts or unnamed forces opposed to transformation. Many of those explanations contain elements of truth. But they do not fix a pothole, keep the lights on or stop public money from being stolen.

Groenewald’s appeal comes from his forthrightness. He identifies a problem, tells the public what is wrong and explains what he is doing about it.

The prison bread scandal is a perfect example.

Correctional Services was paying as much as R24.50 for a loaf of bread — more than many consumers pay at a supermarket. One contractor supplying prisons did not even own a bakery. The contractor allegedly subcontracted the actual baking at about R15 a loaf and pocketed approximately R1-million a month without producing a single loaf.

Groenewald stopped the arrangement and accelerated the department’s self-sufficiency programme. Offenders now bake bread inside prison facilities at a reported cost of approximately R8 a loaf. Correctional Services operates 12 bakeries with another planned, and Groenewald says the department is approaching 97% self-sufficiency in bread. Its agricultural, manufacturing and food-production programmes saved taxpayers more than R200-million in the last financial year.

The department is also reducing its use of consultants. Spending fell from R119.3-million in 2024/25 to a projected R29.2-million in 2025/26. Prison escapes fell from 20 in 2023/24 to four in 2025/26. More than 2,300 officials faced disciplinary action in the past financial year.

This is not a complete turnaround. South African prisons remain overcrowded, understaffed and vulnerable to corruption and contraband. Tens of thousands of unsentenced detainees are awaiting trial. But politics is comparative. Voters do not compare a minister with perfection. They compare him with the excuses, scandals and drift they see elsewhere.

This explains the phrase “Nangu umlungu” — here is the white man — which has spread through social media and even inspired music. It is not necessarily an expression of racial submission. It is often a sarcastic rebuke to black leaders who promised liberation but delivered tenderpreneurs.

The voter saying “Nangu umlungu” may not support Afrikaner nationalism, Orania or the FF Plus’s opposition to affirmative action and black economic empowerment. That voter may simply be saying: here is someone doing the work.

That distinction will define the FF Plus campaign before the 4 November local elections.

The party has historically performed better in municipal elections than its small national footprint suggests. In 2016 it received about 229,000 votes, winning just under 0.8% and about 67 council seats. In 2021 its support surged to approximately 549,000 votes, or 2.34%, and about 221 councillors — more than doubling its vote and tripling its representation, largely by taking Afrikaans voters from the DA. But in 2024 it won only 218,850 national votes, or 1.36%, and fell from 10 to six National Assembly seats. Many voters had returned to the DA.

This is the FF Plus contradiction. It has a history of local-election breakthroughs but remains vulnerable when national voters consolidate around the DA.

There are warning signs for the DA nonetheless. In Tshwane’s Ward 57, covering parts of Centurion and Lyttelton, the FF Plus increased from 16% in 2021 to more than 44% in a January 2026 by-election. The DA survived by about 270 votes.

The FF Plus is strongest in Afrikaans suburbs and towns in Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Limpopo, North West, the Free State and the Northern Cape. It cannot replace the DA nationally, but it can frustrate DA growth.

Another unexpected weakness for the DA is the handling of the foot-and-mouth disease crisis. John Steenhuisen’s management of the outbreak cost him the agriculture portfolio. By the time he was removed, the outbreak had reportedly affected more than 297,000 cattle and resulted in the culling of more than 120,000 animals.

Behind those numbers are farming families who lost livestock, income and years of breeding investment. Farm organisations accused Steenhuisen of reacting too slowly, insisting on central government control of vaccines and failing to work urgently enough with private veterinary structures. Changing the minister does not restore culled cattle, lost income or closed markets. Some farmers who traditionally supported the DA may decide to punish it in November.

The foot-and-mouth crisis also feeds a wider conservative complaint. Some white conservative voters believe the DA has become too accommodating towards the ANC and too reluctant to confront it over racial policy, rural security and farm attacks. The FF Plus has been far more consistent in presenting itself as the defender of minority concerns — speaking forcefully about farm attacks, property rights, language and community safety.

This gives the FF Plus two very different routes to growth. Groenewald’s performance may attract black voters who are tired of incompetence and prepared to reward excellence regardless of where it comes from. At the same time, anger over foot-and-mouth disease and the DA’s GNU compromises may return conservative Afrikaans voters to the FF Plus.

The danger for the DA is that Groenewald is using exactly the same argument it uses to promote Cape Town and the Western Cape: judge us by what we do, not by what our opponents say about us.

The FF Plus still faces a racial and ideological ceiling. Black admiration for one minister does not automatically translate into support for a party built around minority rights. Social-media applause is not a secret ballot.

But the political meaning of “Nangu umlungu” should not be underestimated.

It tells the ANC that liberation history is losing its power to excuse present failure. It tells the DA that it does not own the constituency for clean and competent government. And it tells the FF Plus that its most effective campaign among black voters may not be a new slogan or manifesto.

It may simply be one minister doing his job.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose will go deeper on the “Nangu umlungu” phenomenon and what Pieter Groenewald’s rise means for South African politics ahead of November in this week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from Scrolla and Currency. Hear more from Zukile on the Sharp Sharp podcast, where he and Rob Rose unpack the week in South African politics every Thursday.

Pictured above: Pieter Groenewald. 

Image source: Freedom Front

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After the 4 November local government elections, Julius Malema and Jacob Zuma may hold the balance of power in some of South Africa’s biggest and most economically important cities, writes Zukile Majova in Real Politics. 

That prospect should worry ratepayers, investors and political parties alike.

The Economic Freedom Fighters and uMkhonto weSizwe Party could jointly command between 20% and 25% in some contested councils. If neither the ANC nor the DA wins an outright majority, Malema and Zuma may be able to decide who becomes mayor, who controls the municipal budget and which parties receive the most powerful portfolios.

But the two men who could become the country’s most influential municipal kingmakers are potentially the worst coalition partners available.

Both lead highly centralised parties built around the authority and political fortunes of their founders. Neither organisation has a credible record of municipal government. Both favour aggressive populism over the compromises required to keep water flowing, repair roads, collect revenue and maintain investment-grade cities.

There is an alternative. The ANC and DA should take the cooperation they established in the Government of National Unity and extend it into hung municipalities.

The two parties disagree profoundly on transformation, economic policy, property rights and the role of the state. They will remain electoral rivals. But they share a basic commitment to constitutional government, institutional continuity and an economy capable of financing public services. That common ground is more important than ideological purity in municipalities approaching collapse.

After the 2021 election, 66 councils were hung. That number is unlikely to decline in November and may increase as MK, the Patriotic Alliance, the IFP, ActionSA and smaller parties fragment the vote further. At least five metros — Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini and Nelson Mandela Bay — are highly likely to be hung. Mangaung could join them.

These cities do not have another five years to waste.

Johannesburg has had eight mayors since 2019. Governments have been assembled and removed through deals involving parties with tiny electoral mandates. Kabelo Gwamanda became mayor despite Al Jama-ah holding only three of the council’s 270 seats. His appointment was not an expression of voters’ will. It was the result of larger parties being unable to agree on which of them should govern.

While politicians fought over positions, Johannesburg’s water, electricity and road infrastructure deteriorated. Residents were left with dry taps, collapsing traffic lights, power interruptions and rising municipal bills. Similar instability has affected Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay. Mayors are removed before their programmes can be implemented. Municipal budgets become bargaining instruments in coalition negotiations.

This is not democracy working. It is fragmentation paralysing government.

The ANC and DA together could end most of this instability.

Based on their 2021 results, the two parties had a combined vote of approximately 60% in Johannesburg, 67% in Tshwane, 67% in Ekurhuleni, 68% in eThekwini, 79% in Nelson Mandela Bay and 76% in Mangaung. The numbers will shift in November, particularly in eThekwini where MK has reordered KwaZulu-Natal politics. But an ANC-DA combination will still command clear governing majorities in all six metros.

A simple principle could govern these coalitions: the party with the most council seats takes the mayoralty, while the second party receives the deputy mayoralty, speakership and a proportional share of portfolio positions. The agreement should not be renegotiated separately in every city behind closed doors. The parties should negotiate a national framework establishing transparent rules for municipalities where their combined vote produces a stable majority.

That framework should include a binding five-year programme, merit-based appointments, independent supply-chain controls, public performance targets and dispute-resolution procedures. Residents should know before they vote that an ANC-DA coalition would be based on the election result, not on secret negotiations over tenders and portfolios.

The Government of National Unity has already demonstrated the strategic value of this kind of cooperation. Whatever its internal tensions, it prevented national power from becoming dependent on either the EFF or MK after the 2024 election.

The same principle worked in KwaZulu-Natal. The IFP, ANC, DA and NFP combined to keep the provincial government functioning despite MK emerging as the largest party. Without that agreement, Zuma’s party would have used its 37 seats and its EFF alliance to dominate the province. Instead, the IFP’s Thami Ntuli became premier and a multiparty executive was formed around parties prepared to operate within the constitutional framework.

Municipalities need the same firewall.

This is not an argument that the EFF and MK should be excluded because their policies are radical. Voters who support them are entitled to representation. The danger lies in handing control of struggling cities to parties whose leadership cultures, policy promises and coalition conduct offer little assurance of stable administration.

The EFF has almost 1,000 councillors and commands roughly 10% of the vote, yet it has not won outright control of a single municipality. MK has never governed a municipality, province or national department under its own name. Its structures remain bound to Zuma’s personal authority, while many of its prominent figures emerged from the networks associated with the worst years of state capture.

An EFF-MK bloc could be large enough to bring down governments but not disciplined enough to run them.

The ANC and DA are not innocent bystanders in the municipal crisis. The ANC presided over cadre deployment, corruption and administrative decay in many councils. The DA has contributed to instability through rigid coalition management and an inability to sustain relationships with smaller partners.

An ANC-DA pact would work only if both abandoned the belief that cooperation requires the other party’s surrender. The ANC would have to accept professional administration, stronger financial controls and consequences for corruption. The DA would have to accept that transformation and the extension of services to historically neglected communities are central functions of municipal government, not optional ideological concessions.

Such an agreement would not end political competition. It would move that competition away from motions of no confidence and towards measurable performance. The party running the finance portfolio could be judged on revenue collection. The party responsible for infrastructure could be judged on water losses, road repairs and capital spending. Residents would finally be able to compare results.

Malema and Zuma may emerge from November as powerful kingmakers. But South Africa’s biggest cities should not be forced to depend on them.

The ANC and DA already possess the combined electoral mandate to govern these metros. Their duty is to use it.

A grand municipal coalition would be uncomfortable, argumentative and imperfect. But five years of predictable government would be vastly better than another term of collapsing coalitions, proxy mayors and political looting.

South Africa does not need another experiment in municipal chaos. It needs its two largest parties to accept that, in the country’s broken cities, stable government has become more important than permanent political warfare.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose discuss whether an ANC-DA grand municipal coalition is realistic and what it would take to make it work in this week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from Scrolla and Currency. Hear more from Zukile on the Sharp Sharp podcast, where he and Rob Rose unpack the week in South African politics every Wednesday.

Pictured above: Geordin Hill-Lewis and Cyril Ramaphosa. 

Image source: Geordin Hill-Lewis/X

Helen Zille is running the strongest campaign in Johannesburg, but she is not yet winning the coalition war, Zukile Majova writes in Real Politics. 

The DA can finish first on 4 November and still watch an ANC-led alliance elect the mayor. That is the paradox shaping Johannesburg’s municipal election. Winning the election and winning the mayoralty are no longer the same thing.

Coalition politics has changed everything.

Johannesburg is heading into another hung council. No single party appears capable of securing the 136 seats needed for an outright majority in the 270-seat council. The city’s next government will almost certainly be decided after election day, when parties begin negotiating behind closed doors.

The DA enters the race with momentum, but also with unfinished business.

In 2016, the party came within touching distance of taking Johannesburg outright after winning close to 480,000 votes. Five years later, that support had collapsed to about 240,000 proportional representation votes. Some voters stayed home. Many defected to Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA. Others drifted to smaller parties.

For Zille to achieve her ambition, the DA must recover much of that lost support. That means persuading former DA voters that returning to the party offers the best chance of changing Johannesburg’s fortunes, while expanding into communities where the party has historically struggled.

The DA’s biggest challenge is no longer defeating the ANC. It is rebuilding the broad coalition of voters that briefly made outright victory seem possible almost a decade ago.

The political landscape, however, has shifted dramatically since then.

The biggest new variable is Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party. MK did not exist during the 2021 local government elections. Yet in the 2024 provincial election, the party won more than 172,000 votes in Johannesburg, largely at the ANC’s expense.

At first glance, that appears to benefit the DA by weakening the ANC. But the reality is more complicated. Every new party in the council makes coalition negotiations more complex. MK may reduce the ANC’s vote share while simultaneously increasing the number of parties available for an anti-DA coalition after the election.

That is why this contest cannot be understood simply as a race between the DA and the ANC. It is a contest between competing coalition blocs.

The by-election results since 2021 reinforce this picture. The DA remains exceptionally strong in its traditional suburban heartlands, winning overwhelming majorities in wards across the northern suburbs. But outside those strongholds, progress has been harder.

The breakthrough in Evaton earlier this year, where the DA narrowly won a township ward in Emfuleni, suggested that the party can attract black working and middle-class voters frustrated by collapsing public services. But one victory does not signal a realignment. More telling is what has happened in Johannesburg itself. Despite holding its suburban base comfortably, the DA has not won a single Johannesburg by-election from another party since the 2021 municipal elections.

Another party has.

The Patriotic Alliance has quietly become one of the biggest winners of the coalition era, taking wards from both the ANC and the DA and steadily increasing its bargaining power. It may not emerge as one of Johannesburg’s largest parties. But in a fragmented council, even a handful of seats could determine who becomes mayor.

This is precisely why Zille’s task extends beyond campaigning. She must also convince potential coalition partners that a DA-led administration would be worth supporting.

That may prove more difficult than winning votes.

Relations between the DA and ActionSA remain strained after years of unstable coalition governments in Johannesburg and Tshwane. Smaller parties have frequently accused the DA of adopting a dominant approach to coalition management. Those tensions contributed to the revolving door of mayors that has characterised Johannesburg over the past five years.

The ANC has shown greater flexibility. Its alliances with the EFF, Al Jama-ah and smaller parties have often been unstable, but they have repeatedly achieved one objective: preventing the DA from governing South Africa’s biggest metros. MK now introduces another possible partner into that equation.

For the DA, therefore, becoming the biggest party may only be the first hurdle. The second is assembling a stable governing majority before its rivals do.

That brings the focus back to turnout.

The DA’s clearest route to power is not persuading large numbers of ANC supporters to switch. It is motivating former DA supporters who stayed away in 2021 to return to the polls. If those voters come back in significant numbers, the DA moves closer to governing. If they stay home, coalition arithmetic begins to favour everyone else.

Johannesburg’s election is often described as a referendum on service delivery. It is certainly that. Residents are living with failing infrastructure, water shortages, electricity interruptions and deteriorating roads.

But politically, this election is about something bigger.

It is a referendum on whether coalition politics can produce a stable government.

Zille is presenting herself as the experienced administrator who restored confidence in Cape Town and the Western Cape. Her campaign is built on competence rather than ideology. Whether that message resonates beyond the DA’s traditional support base remains the defining question of the campaign.

One thing already seems clear. Johannesburg is unlikely to produce a decisive winner. It will almost certainly produce a complicated negotiation. The DA could finish first. The ANC could finish second. MK could reshape the balance of power. The Patriotic Alliance and other smaller parties could become kingmakers.

When the votes are counted, the battle for Johannesburg may only just be beginning.

That is why Helen Zille can win the election and still lose City Hall.

Zukile Majova and Rob Rose go deeper on the Johannesburg race and what Helen Zille actually needs to win power in this week’s edition of Sharp Sharp, the podcast from Scrolla and Currency. Hear more from Zukile on the Sharp Sharp podcast, where he and Rob Rose unpack the week in South African politics every Wednesday.

Pictured above: Helen Zille. 

Image source: @Our_DA