JOHANNESBURG — South Africans vote in local government elections on Wednesday, November 4, that will determine control of the country's largest cities and test whether the African National Congress continues its electoral decline, the Associated Press reported. Voters will elect councillors, who will then choose mayors to oversee municipal services including water, sanitation and rubbish collection.

Source: Associated Press

Polling suggests the historically dominant ANC will remain the biggest single party overall, but could fall to as low as 31% to 34% of the vote — around half the more than 60% it secured in the 2011 local elections, Reuters reported on Monday. Special voting for those unable to vote on Wednesday got under way on Monday, the state news agency SAnews reported, with the Electoral Commission having approved 2.65 million special vote applications — a 131% increase compared with the 2021 local elections.

Voters are scattering, not switching in one direction

Louw Nel, senior political analyst at Oxford Economics Africa, told Reuters the Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party, was not capturing all of the ANC's deserters. Instead, voters were dispersing among a number of parties, including the left-leaning Economic Freedom Fighters and uMkhonto weSizwe, led by former president Jacob Zuma. Hundreds of parties are contesting the elections.

The fragmentation is visible in individual voters' stories. Mpho Moroka, a 38-year-old from Soweto who first voted for the ANC in 2008, told Reuters she has switched to the Democratic Alliance. In Cape Town, 28-year-old first-time voter Abdul Tonta said he wanted change and jobs.

Johannesburg: seven mayors in five years

Nowhere is the coalition question sharper than in Johannesburg, Africa's richest city and home to nearly five million people. The city has had seven mayors since the 2021 local elections, and its previous two mayors came from a party holding only three of the council's 270 seats, Reuters reported. "The most important question in cities like Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni is whether they will produce a stable government," Nel told Reuters.

The ANC lost its parliamentary majority in 2024 and formed a unity government with the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties — an arrangement analysts say could be replicated locally, though neither side is enthusiastic. The ANC's Johannesburg regional chairperson, Loyiso Masuku, acknowledged that coalitions make it difficult to fully implement the party's programme, while the DA's Johannesburg mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, told AP the ANC was "collapsing" and in "free fall" — a claim the ANC disputes as it campaigns to hold the metros.

For voters, the stakes are immediate: whoever governs the metros after November 4 will be responsible for water, power, sanitation and rubbish collection in cities where years of unstable coalitions have coincided with worsening services. Results are expected in the days after Wednesday's vote.

Sources: Reuters, 'South Africa's splintering vote sets up multi-party battle for cities' (November 2, 2026); Associated Press, 'South Africans to vote in key local elections seen as a tough test for ruling ANC' (November 2026); SAnews, 'First day of special votes kicks off' (November 2, 2026).