Johannesburg could fall below 30% for the ANC as analysts see an ANC-DA deal after the local polls

The ANC could drop below 30% in Johannesburg and the DA could be forced into a coalition to hold Cape Town, according to analysts quoted by the Mail & Guardian on 30 October, who see an ANC-DA governing arrangement after the local government elections as one of the more workable outcomes.

Independent election analyst Michael Atkins told the paper the significance of these polls will lie less in the campaign than in how parties conduct themselves in coalition negotiations. “Irrespective of any possible legislation, we need to build up a culture of respect across divides, where the needs of voters are prioritised over short-term interests,” Atkins said.

He said public opinion polling showed a clear possibility of the ANC falling below 30% in Johannesburg. A key implication, he said, would be an overhang in which the ANC retains more wards than its total proportional representation allocation, a gap he put at possibly five seats, meaning the ANC would sit without PR councillors.

Professor Sethulego Matebesi, head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the Free State, quoted the MarkData poll placing the DA at 35% and the ANC at 21.8% in Johannesburg, and predicted a hung council. He cautioned that such polls struggle to model who will actually turn out in low-turnout local elections. “While the DA will do well in Johannesburg, it will keep its mayoralty of Cape Town,” he said, though he added that an outright majority in Cape Town is uncertain, with parties such as the Patriotic Alliance expected to draw support away from the DA. “For this reason, a high turnout matters more than any campaign issue.”

On the numbers, Matebesi said rough poll shares are not seats. The combinations with enough weight to govern are the DA plus the ANC, or the DA with several smaller parties. He described the first as more stable but politically costly for both, and the second as dependent on repairing the relationship between Helen Zille and Herman Mashaba. A broad ANC-led alliance of MK, EFF and ActionSA is arithmetically possible, he said, but would be hard to hold together.

Zille, the DA’s Johannesburg mayoral candidate, has ruled out a coalition with the EFF and MK Party, which leaves the ANC as the available major partner in the country’s economic capital.

Crime in Cape Town has put the DA on the back foot, with the argument often turning on its mooted plan to spend millions on a nine-kilometre concrete barrier along the N2 highway between Baden-Powell Road and Bhunga Avenue. Matebesi said 45.3% of people in Cape Town blame the national government for gangsterism, against 25.3% who do not, which limits the damage to the DA. Whether the wall is racially divisive is a value judgement, he said, and public opinion appears to split depending on where people live. He noted that the acting police minister has said such walls cannot replace policing, which he called the strongest neutral point against treating the barrier as the main crime strategy. The DA has been accused of prioritising affluent suburbs, while its supporters say black residents get better services where it governs.

Dr Oscar van Heerden, a research associate and senior research fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership, strongly opposed the wall, describing Executive Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis’s plan as racially motivated. “With the majority of citizens in Cape Town being racist, they will unfortunately support such an initiative,” he said, calling it a dangerous precedent that would create prison-like territories around the city without curbing crime.

Van Heerden also disputed the DA’s clean-governance record, saying the party ran a number of metros after 2016 and could not turn them around, and that the courts have agreed the party spent more on services in affluent suburbs than in poor black townships. The DA has been exposed, he said, for maintaining apartheid spatial patterns with little integration in housing.

Zille used her final rally, under the theme “Now or Never: Don’t Joburg’s Last Chance”, to set out the DA’s priorities for Johannesburg’s finances, installing what she called honest and capable people, declaring war on corruption, making the municipality work for residents and restoring law and order. She pointed to the party’s governing record, saying Cape Town replaces old water and sewer pipes at five times the rate of Johannesburg, keeps the lights on when Eskom cuts power, and has more working streetlights in Khayelitsha than in Sandton. She said DA-run Midvaal has achieved 12 consecutive clean audits, and claimed Cape Town has added more jobs since 2016 than the other seven metros combined, 120 000 more than Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and Mangaung put together.

The ANC’s manifesto pledges to turn around municipal service delivery, with a first-100-days plan to invest at least 8% of municipal asset values in maintenance and renewal, get 50% or more municipalities to clean or unqualified audits, and set procurement or employment shares of 40% for women, 20% for youth and 3% for people with disabilities.

President Cyril Ramaphosa remained the face of the ANC campaign and has attacked the DA’s governance record, describing Cape Town as “a tale of two cities” in which quality services are concentrated in wealthy areas while townships and informal settlements face severe water, housing and sanitation problems. He pledged to redouble efforts against crime, saying rebuilding trust in law enforcement requires rooting out corruption and criminal infiltration within the SAPS.

The ANC last governed Cape Town in 2006 and is hoping to build on its 2021 support as it challenges the DA in the metro.