Cape Town's opposition leader in council quits his seat 13 days before the election

Cape Town’s leader of the opposition in the city council, Ndithini Tyhido, has given up his seat with 13 days to go before the local government elections.

Tyhido resigned as an ANC proportional-representation councillor in the City of Cape Town with effect from 22 October 2026. He tendered the resignation in writing under section 27(1)(a) of the Local Government: Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998, the ANC said in a statement.

As IOL reported on 25 October, the party says the move frees him to concentrate on the ANC’s campaign for the 4 November elections. He stays on as chairperson of the party’s Dullah Omar Region and remains an ANC member, so the resignation removes him from the council bench without removing him from the campaign.

That split matters for how the last fortnight of this election looks. The Dullah Omar Region covers the metro’s western and southern reaches and is one of the party’s most closely watched structures in the country. Its chair is the person the ANC puts in front of communities in those wards, and the party’s statement describes Tyhido as continuing to serve as “the face of the ANC in the region”.

What changes in the council chamber is more concrete. A PR councillor is seated from the party list rather than elected by a ward, and the vacancy is filled from that list under the proportional system. The practical effect is that the ANC’s opposition caucus in the city enters the final stretch of the campaign with one fewer member and without the man who led it.

What voters will notice is where Tyhido turns up between now and 4 November. The ANC said it had asked him to use the time to mobilise communities and to work for what the party called a decisive mandate to build a better Cape Town, and it thanked him for his work representing the city’s residents.

The party did not say in its statement who takes over as leader of the opposition in the council, and the source material does not name a replacement. It also does not give Tyhido’s reasons in his own words. The account of why he stepped down is the ANC’s.

On the record available, the resignation itself is not in dispute. The party confirmed the date, the statutory basis and the fact that his regional post is untouched. What remains open is the council arithmetic after the list substitution and the shape of the ANC’s campaign in the metro in its final days, both of which will be settled before polls open on 4 November.