Eight ANC candidates contest Rustenburg mayoral selection
The ruling party's North West region has put forward a field that includes the sitting mayor, a former MEC and a former MP for a municipality it no longer controls outright.
The ANC has put forward eight candidates for the position of mayor in the Rustenburg local municipality in the North West, a field that includes the current office holder, a former provincial MEC and a former member of Parliament.
As The Citizen reported on 21 September, the party has fielded the candidates for the mayoral seat in a municipality it no longer controls outright.
Rustenburg became a hung municipality after the 2021 local government elections, when the ANC lost the exclusive control of the council it had held before. The party has since governed through a coalition with smaller parties.
Who is in the running
The incumbent mayor, Shiela Mabale-Huma, is among the contenders. She also chairs the ANC’s Bojanala regional structure.
Paul Sebegoe, a former MEC, is standing. So is Jeanette Dibetso-Nyathi, a former mayor of Rustenburg.
Koketso Mogomotsi, the ANC’s current provincial elections manager and a former speaker of the Rustenburg council, is also in the race.
Two further names complete the field as reported. Matthews Wolmarans is a former Rustenburg mayor and an ex-MP. Wendy Matsemela chairs the ANC Women’s League and is a former MEC.
What the field reflects
Political observers quoted by The Citizen read the number of candidates as a sign of significant internal division within the ANC.
That reading sits alongside a wider feature of North West politics. The province has a dense field of civil society organisations that have won council seats, and many of those parties were formed by former ANC members who left the governing party.
What the eight candidacies mean in practice will be settled by the party’s own selection process rather than by voters directly. South Africa’s local government system does not elect mayors by popular vote. Councils choose them, which means the contest that matters first is the one inside the ANC’s regional and provincial structures.
For residents of Rustenburg, a city whose economy is built around platinum mining and its surrounding belt, the practical question is which of these figures can hold together a coalition council that no single party commands. The municipality’s mayoral chain has changed hands more than once since the 2021 result, and each change carries consequences for budgets, service delivery and the stability of the administration.
The ANC’s North West structures have not yet announced a timetable for finalising the selection.
