ANC enters final stretch of local election campaign without a mayoral candidate in any of the eight metros

South Africans vote in the local government elections on November 4, and the ANC will go into the final weeks of the campaign without a mayoral candidate in any of the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities.

The party unveiled 42 potential candidates in August after a public selection process, leaving its national officials to make the final picks. That decision has not been announced, and the ANC is now in the last stretch of the campaign with its mayoral line-up unresolved in several key battlegrounds.

The DA, the EFF, ActionSA, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party and several others have already named candidates for the mayoral races in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and eThekwini.

As IOL reported on October 5, the latest Ipsos polling paints a different picture in each metro. The ANC and DA are closely matched in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City. The DA records 46% in Cape Town. MK recorded 55% in eThekwini, the EFF 27% in Buffalo City, and ActionSA double-digit support in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni.

The Ipsos findings rest on interviews with 3 600 South Africans conducted in June and July. The firm has cautioned that the figures should not be read as a prediction of the final result, and that its findings in Nelson Mandela Bay, Mangaung and Buffalo City rest on relatively small samples.

Polling is not an election, and South African readers have watched polls miss before. What the numbers do show is where the contest is tight enough that a few thousand votes, or a few seats on a council, will decide who governs.

For an ordinary voter, that matters in a practical way. Councils set property rates and service tariffs, award the contracts that fix or fail to fix water and electricity, and decide how quickly a blocked drain or an illegal dumping site is cleared. In a hung council, those decisions are made by whichever parties can agree on a coalition, and the mayor is chosen by the councillors, not by the voters directly.

Johannesburg is the clearest example of the problem. Seventy-five parties are contesting the proportional representation ballot in the city. No party has governed Johannesburg alone since 2016, and the metro has cycled through a series of coalition arrangements since then.

The DA has made inroads in Johannesburg, according to UKZN political analyst Dr Siyabonga Ntombela, who said the party’s mayoral candidacy under Helen Zille has put it neck and neck with the ANC. A Polymarket prediction market tracking the next Johannesburg mayor had Zille at 67.5% in its October 1 snapshot, followed by Frank Chikane at 14.7%, Lukhona Mnguni at 7.4%, Herman Mashaba at 4%, Loyiso Masuku at 3.9% and Dada Morero at 1.5%.

Prediction markets are not elections either, and the snapshot is a market’s view of a field, not a count of votes. It is worth noting only because it shows how the contest is being read by people with money on it.

In Tshwane, Ntombela said the DA was the favourite, citing polls that put the party between 31% and 43%, and said it could convert a near-tie into a clear lead. Ipsos recorded double-digit support for ActionSA in the metro. UKZN political analyst Zakhele Ndlovu also said the DA was likely to grow its support in Johannesburg and Tshwane.

Ekurhuleni is harder to call. Ntombela said it was unclear whether the ANC or DA would emerge victorious, but that ActionSA’s double-digit support was likely to bolster the DA’s votes. Ndlovu said MK could also make gains there.

Ekurhuleni, like Johannesburg and Tshwane, has not been governed by a single party since 2016.

eThekwini is where the picture changes most sharply. In the 2021 local government election, the ANC took 42.02% of the vote in the metro, the DA 26.62% and the EFF 10.48%. Ipsos now records 55% support for MK among voters who selected a party. Sixty-nine parties are contesting the PR ballot there.

Ntombela said MK would have the lion’s share but would need one or two smaller parties to co-govern with, and that the prospect of an outright majority was dim. He said the ANC led in 2021 and MK is now the frontrunner.

Ndlovu said MK’s performance in KwaZulu-Natal could result in its mayoral candidates leading a significant number of municipalities, depending on its post-election negotiations.

Professor Theo Neethling, a research fellow in Political Studies and Governance at the University of the Free State, said eThekwini should be treated with more caution because the ANC had historically held a strong position there and the 2026 landscape was far more fragmented. He said recent polls suggested a shift in the balance of power, but that polls do not predict the final outcome.

Cape Town remains the DA’s strongest metro, on 46% in the Ipsos polling. Ipsos said the party could exceed 50% as campaigning continues. Ntombela said the DA was comfortable at that level and that the chances of a coalition government in the city were slim to none, though he said the party was likely to lose some ground marginally.

In Nelson Mandela Bay, Ipsos identified a competitive ANC-DA race, with the same caution about sample size. Ntombela gave the ANC the edge but said the DA was close behind, drawing his inference from the provincial election outcome. He named the metro alongside Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni as one of three where he expected significant competition.

In Mangaung, Ntombela said the DA was ahead of the ANC but cautioned that the gap could narrow before election day, and that polling in the metro was uncertain. Ipsos warned that its Mangaung findings should be treated with caution because of the relatively small sample.

Buffalo City is the EFF’s strongest metro result in the survey at 27%, with the ANC and DA as the other main contenders. Ntombela said the EFF was the strongest party there. Ipsos again cautioned about the sample size.

Neethling warned against singling out any one smaller party, including the EFF or the PA, as the key coalition player in advance. With 75 parties on the PR ballot in Johannesburg, 70 in Tshwane, 67 in Ekurhuleni and 69 in eThekwini, he said the potential role of smaller parties was part of a broader fragmentation. A party holding a relatively small number of seats could become the missing link in a coalition if the larger parties fail to secure a majority.

He said the precise composition and stability of post-election coalitions would be difficult to predict, because it would only become clear which combinations could form a majority once the final seat allocation was known. He identified Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and eThekwini as the four metros where coalition outcomes would matter most.

“The result does not merely determine who comes first,” Neethling said. “It determines who possesses sufficient negotiating power to assemble a workable majority after the election.”

That is the sentence to keep in mind on November 4. The count will produce a winner in each metro. It will not necessarily produce a government, and in the four biggest metros it probably will not produce one on its own.

Source: IOL, LGE 2026: ANC, DA face metro battles as MK leads in eThekwini