The African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, in government since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, suffered a resounding defeat in the municipal elections held on Thursday. The new distribution of forces in the continent's leading economy predicts tough negotiations between the parties for control of large metropolitan areas such as Johannesburg and Durban. Some conversations in which Nelson Mandela's historic party will start from a weaker position than ever.
Once 99% of the votes have been counted, the ANC has obtained 31% support, almost 15 percentage points less than in the 2021 municipal elections, when it recorded its worst result. The main opposition party, Democratic Alliance (DA), is in second place with 25% of the votes, according to electoral commission data collected by Reuters. Third position goes to former president Jacob Zuma's party, Umkhonto WeSizwe (Spear of the Nation), which has gained 10% of support. The rest is distributed among hundreds of small formations.
In the main South African cities, no party has obtained support of more than 50%, so the majority parties, the ANC and the DA, will have to agree between themselves or ally with smaller parties in order to form a government. From now on, the parties will have 14 days to negotiate before the municipal councils are formed.
The ANC, party of the late anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, is in its worst moment since the end of the segregationist regime after in 2024 it also lost its national parliamentary majority, which it had enjoyed since the beginning of democracy in South Africa in 1994. In fact, its secretary general, Fikile Mbalula, has described the result as “catastrophic”, but has also assured that his party will not beg for positions. “When people tell us that we have fallen short... the honest response is not to argue with them, but to go home and put our house in order,” he declared this Saturday.
High unemployment, especially among young people, the poor functioning of basic services such as the supply of water and electricity, crime and irregular immigration are the issues that concern South Africans, and those that have marked the electoral campaign. Unemployment among the active population aged 15 to 34 reaches 47.4% and the number of homicides stood at 23,096 in the last fiscal year (April 2025 to March 2026) according to the sum of the quarterly statistics of the South African police.
On the other hand, the prolonged episodes of electrical rationing or load-shedding that the country suffered for years, caused by breakdowns and lack of maintenance of infrastructure, have caused citizens to lose confidence in the ANC after 32 years in power and support has skyrocketed for other political groups that propose measures to tackle these problems.
Democratic Alliance, which has traditionally governed in Cape Town, in the southwest of the country, has revalidated its absolute majority in this city, the legislative capital of South Africa, by obtaining 133 of the 235 councilors of the City Council. In municipalities in other provinces it has also managed to increase its number of supporters. DA leader and Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has said his party has already started contacting potential coalition partners. “We will approach the coming weeks with respect for the mandates that these parties have received from their voters, with humility and with the commitment to try to form governments that make these cities and municipalities work,” he expressed.
In Johannesburg, one of the economic lungs of the country, the DA has achieved 35% of the votes compared to 20% for the ANC, which gives the democratic candidate Helen Zille the opportunity to be mayor. Zille promised during his campaign that he will repair the city's battered roads, as well as the pipes that have recently been causing significant water leaks in various neighborhoods.
In a statement, the DA has stated that it is willing to enter into talks to form coalitions with “political parties that share the commitment to a clean and accountable Government, the eradication of corruption and the provision of services for all, the rule of law and the absence of racial discrimination.”
Political analyst Ralph Mathekga points out that the easiest way for the DA to form stable governments could be to reach agreements with the ANC, its partner in the national executive, although that would risk alienating voters who have just punished the ANC. “I think that if voters wanted the ANC to govern in the municipalities again, they would have voted for the ANC,” Mathekga told Reuters.
One of the small parties that has achieved the best results is ActionSA, founded in 2020 by the former mayor of Johannesburg Herman Mashaba, especially in the province of Gauteng, and is configured as a pivotal party when it comes to forming government coalitions. Mashaba affirmed yesterday that he was willing to negotiate with parties from across the political spectrum if the goal was to improve basic services, stabilize city councils and combat corruption. “Ultimately, I am quite convinced that no government will be formed without us,” said its national president, Michael Beaumont.
The MK Party, uMkhonto we Sizwe or Spear of the Nation, founded by former president Jacob Zuma in 2023 after his break with the ANC, from which he was expelled in 2024, has also risen considerably. Zuma, 84, was former president of South Africa with the ANC between 2009 and 2018, the year in which he resigned due to pressure from his party due to a succession of corruption scandals. In 2021 he was sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of the Constitutional Court, but that same year he was released from prison for medical reasons and subsequently benefited from a reduction in his sentence.
The MK has the same name as the one that was the armed wing of the ANC during the years of apartheid, but both correspond to very different contexts: while the historical MK was a guerrilla force integrated into the liberation movement led by Mandela, the current MK is a political party with a nationalist and populist ideology opposed to the ANC and articulated around the leadership of Zuma, who continues to be one of the most influential figures in South African politics.
MK advocates greater state intervention in the economy, including the redistribution of land and resources. In immigration matters, it proposes tightening border controls and expelling all foreigners in an irregular situation. His anti-immigration ideas have found fertile ground in KwaZulu-Natal, one of the most populated and politically relevant provinces in the country and the party's main electoral stronghold. This is where strong protests and campaigns of xenophobic violence have been recorded for years, and which have been increasing in recent months, by groups opposed to the foreign population whom they blame for the country's ills, such as unemployment and crime.
In this province, Zuma's party has managed to consolidate its political influence by obtaining around 34% of the votes, and leads the count in 19 of the 44 municipalities, including eThekwini, the municipality that encompasses Durban, the main city of the region, where it leads with 38.4% of the votes counted.
