South Africans Vote in Local Elections in Big Test for ANC

Photo: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters via Al Jazeera (people queueing to vote in Lawley, south of Johannesburg, 4 November 2026)

South Africans are voting in local elections today in what is widely seen as a verdict on the African National Congress, the party that led the country out of white minority rule in 1994 but has steadily lost support over the past decade. Polls suggest the governing party could fall below 40 percent this time, after it dropped under 50 percent for the first time in 2021.

Polls opened at 7am and close at 9pm. A record 29.2 million people are registered to vote at 23,696 voting stations, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa, and more than 1.4 million special votes were already cast on Monday and Tuesday.

Voters are choosing councils for the country's eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district councils and 205 local councils. Those councils then pick the mayors, so today's vote decides who runs the towns and cities where most daily life happens, from water and rubbish collection to roads and street lights.

That is why the ANC's standing matters so much here. In the 2024 national election it lost its parliamentary majority and had to form a coalition government with the Democratic Alliance and other parties. Now the question is how far its local support has fallen, and President Cyril Ramaphosa has not hidden the problem. In his weekly newsletter he wrote that municipal failures have hurt public trust in democratic governance.

Ramaphosa was due to vote at Hyde Park High School in Johannesburg, the city that is the biggest prize in this election. South Africa's financial capital has had five mayors in four years, a churn that tells its own story about broken councils and shaky coalitions.

The Democratic Alliance has put up its 75 year old former leader, Helen Zille, for Johannesburg's top job. Her campaign included snorkelling in a mud filled trench flooded by a burst municipal water pipe, a stunt meant to sum up the city's service failures in one picture. A News24 poll put her at 36 percent, which would leave her short of a majority and needing coalition partners, particularly the ANC. Zille told the Associated Press that the ANC was in free fall.

This is also the first local vote for former President Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe party, which is mounting a strong challenge in the coastal city of Durban. Zuma told supporters there on Sunday that they were going to start by taking back the country, and Al Jazeera reported that Durban has become a centre of anti migrant sentiment, a prominent theme in the campaign.

Turnout is a worry. Only 46 percent of registered voters took part in the 2021 municipal elections. Coalition government is already the norm in much of the country, with 74 of the 257 municipalities run by coalitions or minority administrations as of February, according to the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.

Security has been tightened after a tense run up to the vote. Police said 21 election related cases have been recorded since Sunday, and KwaZulu-Natal has 165 voting stations classed as high risk, the most of any province. The tension is real: just days ago, an opposition party organiser was shot dead in KwaZulu-Natal while coordinating his party's campaign, a killing that raised fears of political violence before polling day.

For ordinary South Africans, the result will be felt in the streets, not in parliament. A council that works keeps the water running and the lights on. A council that does not leaves residents living with the failures Ramaphosa himself has now admitted. The final results are expected on Sunday, and they are expected to shape the race to succeed Ramaphosa as ANC leader at the party's conference in December 2027.

It is an election week around the world: in the United States, Democrats were projected to win the US House and Democrats flipped the US Senate, but South Africa's vote is the one that will decide who runs its cities for years to come.

Sources

Al Jazeera: South Africans vote in local elections seen as test for embattled ANC

Reuters: South Africa votes in local polls expected to further weaken ANC grip

Watch for the first results and the Johannesburg mayoral maths when counting gets under way.

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