Coalition churn in metros puts 2026 local elections in focus, IOL opinion piece argues

An opinion piece published by IOL on 21 September 2026 argues that coalition instability in South Africa’s metropolitan municipalities is putting service delivery and local economic activity at risk ahead of the 2026 local government elections. The piece is written by Zama Feni, described as a former government communications practitioner, and appears under the outlet’s Cape Argus opinion banner.

Feni’s central claim is that fragmented, multi-party coalition governance in the metros has been disruptive rather than stabilising, and that the practical effect has been to cripple local commerce and community development. The argument is not that coalitions are inherently illegitimate. Feni acknowledges the theoretical case that multi-party arrangements introduce checks and balances and curb the institutional arrogance of single-party dominance. The objection is to how that framework has performed in South Africa’s municipal structures, where, in Feni’s account, it has triggered extreme instability.

What the piece says is going wrong

The mechanism Feni identifies is political churn. In several key metros, coalition governance has become what the piece calls a game of political musical chairs, in which small parties with a narrow share of the vote are elevated to kingmaker status and can hold the stability of multi-million-resident economies hostage to transactional interests.

That churn has an administrative cost. Every shift in a political alliance triggers a purge of senior leadership, according to the piece. City managers, chief financial officers and other key technocrats are shuffled or replaced on the basis of political loyalty rather than technical merit. The consequence Feni draws is the destruction of institutional memory and the stalling of capital infrastructure projects.

Businesses carry a second cost. Feni cites municipal economic surveys for the claim that a striking majority of small businesses lose direct revenue because of localised utility dysfunction. Those businesses, the argument runs, pay twice: once through official municipal rates, and again for private solar systems and water tanks needed to keep operating.

A third consequence is what Feni calls the dilution of accountability. When public utilities collapse, coalition partners externalise blame onto each other, leaving local business chambers and residents without clear avenues for recourse.

The piece also addresses the finances of smaller municipalities, which it describes as weak and almost entirely dependent on national grant bailouts. Feni argues that some of these councils function primarily as channels for patronage, bloated salaries and irregular tenders rather than as funders of real asset management.

The Cape Town comparison

Feni’s piece holds up the City of Cape Town as evidence that a professionalised civil service can protect infrastructure when it is insulated from political warfare. The argument is explicitly not a blanket endorsement of the Democratic Alliance’s broader political philosophy. It is that the party has demonstrated acute leadership where it governs, and that Cape Town is the primary example of what an administration backed by an unambiguous, decisive mandate can achieve.

The piece is careful to note that Cape Town is not immune to the country’s macroeconomic pressures. It cites a massive housing deficit and the legal and social difficulties of illegal land occupations on municipal property. Even so, Feni argues, the city maintains an impressive baseline of operational capability, delivering refuse collection, sanitation, water provision and electrical grid connections even to residents of the most informal settlements on the urban margins.

The conclusion drawn is that stable, capable political leadership in the incoming term is a national necessity rather than a local one, and that Cape Town should remain a visible example for metros entangled in political and administrative difficulty.

What the piece proposes

Feni sets out two legislative steps and one electoral one.

First, Parliament should urgently finalise the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill to introduce statutory thresholds that limit erratic motions of no confidence and stabilise councils.

Second, strict legislative firewalls should be established around the civil service to outlaw political deployment to administrative posts.

Third, and in Feni’s framing most fundamental, voters should look past historical party loyalties and treat local government as a matter of operational logistics and business enablement rather than ideological rhetoric. The warning attached to that call is that without clear political direction and administrative accountability at municipal level, the collapse of local councils will lead to the collapse of the broader national economy.

Why the argument lands where it does

South Africa’s local government elections are scheduled for 2026. The metros Feni writes about are the country’s largest economic nodes, and the councils that run them are the tier of government closest to residents. The argument that coalition arrangements have been unstable is not a fringe position. It reflects a pattern that has played out in several councils since the 2021 local government elections, where no single party won an outright majority in a number of metros and governing arrangements had to be negotiated after the vote.

Feni’s piece is an opinion column, not a research report, and its claims are argued rather than evidenced in full. The reference to municipal economic surveys is not accompanied by a named survey, a sample size or a date. The assertion that a striking majority of small businesses lose revenue to utility dysfunction is therefore a claim made in a comment piece, and readers should treat it as such.

The piece also rests on a comparison that is easier to assert than to test. Cape Town’s operational record and its political stability are real features of the municipal landscape, but attributing that record to the decisiveness of a single-party mandate rather than to a combination of fiscal capacity, revenue base and administrative continuity is an argument, not a finding.

Where the piece is on firm ground is in identifying the mechanism. Political turnover at the top of a municipality does disrupt administrative continuity, and the replacement of senior officials on political rather than technical grounds is a documented feature of South African local government. The Municipal Structures Amendment Bill Feni calls on Parliament to finalise is a real piece of legislation, and the question of how to stabilise councils without suppressing legitimate accountability mechanisms is a live one.

What the piece does not do is put a number on the instability, name the metros it has in mind, or say how many councils have changed leadership since 2021. A reader who wants to test the argument will need those figures, and they are not in the column.

Source: IOL, Coalition instability puts South Africa’s municipalities under pressure ahead of 2026 elections