Ekurhuleni on a knife edge: DA 31,2% and ANC 29,4% as MK Party storms the townships

Ekurhuleni voters go to the polls on Wednesday with the DA narrowly ahead of the ANC in the metro and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party contesting a local government election for the first time, according to an eNCA MarkData poll published on the eve of the vote.

The survey puts the DA on 31,2% of respondents and the ANC on 29,4%, a gap inside the range where either party could plausibly emerge as the largest in the council. As eNCA reported on 3 November, the poll also has the Freedom Front Plus scoring well, and the metro is being watched nationally as a test of whether the MK Party can take wards from the ANC in the townships.

Ekurhuleni is one of South Africa’s largest metros, a sprawling East Rand government that runs from Germiston and Boksburg through Benoni and Brakpan to Katlehong, Tembisa and Vosloorus. It is the kind of council where control has consequences that residents feel directly: water, electricity, refuse collection, roads and the billing system that decides what a household owes the municipality each month.

Water is the issue the campaign has been fought on. eNCA’s summary notes ongoing water challenges and other service delivery concerns facing the community. For households across the East Rand that has meant days without supply, storage tanks in yards, and the familiar routine of checking a municipal notice before running a tap.

The poll’s narrow margin matters because of how South African metro councils are decided. A party that finishes first in the vote count does not automatically take the mayoral chain. Where no party wins an outright majority, coalitions and confidence-and-supply arrangements decide who governs, and a council can change hands between elections if a partner walks. The 31,2% to 29,4% split in the MarkData survey describes first preference at the ballot box, not the outcome of the negotiations that follow.

The MK Party’s entry is the wildcard. eNCA elections analyst Wayne Sussman pointed to Katlehong as a place to watch. In 2021 the ANC took almost 50% of the vote in ward 52, with the IFP second on 19%, a performance Sussman attributes to hostel communities in the area. In the 2024 general election the picture shifted: the MK Party took 26% in the metro while the ANC fell to 38%.

Sussman said the question on election day is whether the MK Party can repeat that in a local contest. “Tomorrow, we are going to be watching wards like this to see if uMkhonto weSizwe can create history and win wards off the ANC in townships like Katlehong,” he said.

He also flagged Brakpan, where he said there are about five roadhouses and where the Freedom Front Plus did best in Ekurhuleni in 2021, with the DA on over 60% and the FF Plus on 17%. The FF Plus polled well in the MarkData survey, and Sussman framed the metro’s ward battles as two separate defensive fights: the ANC holding off the MK Party, the EFF and to some extent the IFP, and the DA holding off the FF Plus and the Patriotic Alliance.

For voters in Katlehong, Tembisa and Vosloorus the practical question is less about which party tops the poll than about which combination of parties can hold a council together long enough to fix a water network. Ekurhuleni has changed hands before, and coalition arrangements in the metro have been unstable. Residents who have spent the past year storing water will judge the new council on whether the taps run, not on the arithmetic of the count.

The polls close on Wednesday evening, with results expected to firm up through the night and coalition talks likely to follow in the days after.