South Africa’s ANC Falls to 32% in Early Local Vote

South Africa’s African National Congress is heading toward its weakest local-election result since the end of apartheid, an upheaval that could push the country’s biggest cities deeper into coalition rule and sharpen the struggle over the ANC’s future.

With roughly 12 percent of ballots counted early Thursday, the ANC held about 32 percent of the national municipal vote, only one point ahead of the Democratic Alliance. A projection from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research also put the ANC near 32 percent, while estimating the DA would finish closer to 26 percent. The count remains incomplete, and neither the early tally nor the projection is a final result.

Early count and CSIR projection: Reuters

Even with that warning, the direction is unmistakable. The ANC won roughly 46 percent in the 2021 municipal election. It then lost its national parliamentary majority in 2024 and entered a government of national unity with the DA and other parties. A finish near one-third would mark another steep retreat for the movement that has led South Africa since 1994.

This vote is local, but its reach is national. Voters are choosing councils across eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district municipalities and 205 local municipalities. Those councils will appoint mayors and control the daily systems through which most people encounter the state: water, power distribution, roads, refuse collection, sanitation and housing administration.

Election scope and municipal process: Associated Press · Electoral Commission of South Africa

That is why anger over broken services has become the election’s central political fact. Residents entered the polling stations after years of water cuts, sewage spills, potholes, power failures and unreliable municipal billing. The ballot has turned those failures into a direct judgment on governing parties, not an abstract debate about ideology.

Photo: President Cyril Ramaphosa with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 2026 BRICS Summit. Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India / Wikimedia Commons / GODL-India

The ANC and DA now face an especially sharp contradiction. They cooperate in the national government, yet compete bitterly for control of cities. In Johannesburg, the DA placed veteran politician Helen Zille at the center of its mayoral campaign while the ANC fought to remain the largest party. Johannesburg has cycled through 10 mayors in a decade, a record of coalition instability that has made basic administration harder rather than easier.

Service-delivery and coalition context: The Guardian

The election also measures the local strength of former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party. MK is contesting municipal power for the first time after emerging as a major force in the 2024 national election, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal. Its performance could deny the ANC clear control in places the governing party once treated as secure.

No major party is close to a national majority in the municipal count. That means the decisive phase may begin after the ballots are tallied. Parties will have to bargain over mayoralties, budgets and committee control, often with smaller organizations holding the balance. The negotiations will determine whether councils can govern or simply reproduce the paralysis voters have already punished.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also faces a succession clock. His ANC leadership term ends in 2027, and the country votes nationally again in 2029. A municipal collapse would strengthen rivals who argue that the party’s coalition strategy and reform program cannot stop its electoral decline. A better-than-projected finish could buy him room. Either way, the old assumption of automatic ANC dominance is gone.

The immediate result still requires discipline. Early counts can overrepresent regions that report quickly, and the official Electoral Commission must complete and certify the tally. But South Africa has already crossed a political threshold: municipal power is fragmenting, and voters are forcing parties to earn authority through performance and workable alliances.

The ANC may remain the largest party when the count ends. It is no longer large enough to govern the country’s urban future alone.

Hero photograph: Husskeyy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped by the locked Pamphlets V9 renderer.