Ndlovu votes in Thulamahashe where the ANC holds 53 of 76 seats and the water still runs short

Mpumalanga Premier Mandla Ndlovu is expected to cast his vote at the Thulamahashe Civic Centre on Wednesday, in the Bushbuckridge community where he grew up, taught mathematics and began his political career. He returns as the province’s premier and as ANC provincial chairperson, and the ballot he casts will be counted in a municipality his party has governed for decades.

As Sunday World reported on 30 October, Ndlovu’s return to Thulamahashe carries the memory of his grandmother’s reassurance during a hard childhood, that hardship would come to an end. The same paper notes that the promise now sits differently on a man who is among those responsible for delivering on it.

Bushbuckridge is one of the ANC’s most dependable strongholds in Mpumalanga. In the 2021 municipal elections the party took 53 of the municipality’s 76 council seats. The EFF won eight and the Independent South African National Civic Organisation five, with the DA and smaller parties sharing the remainder.

That majority has not settled the service questions residents raise. Water provision, sanitation, roads and unemployment remain central concerns across a municipality whose communities are spread over a wide rural area, and those problems show up in households as the water available for daily use, the condition of the road to work or clinic, and the work waiting, or not waiting, for school leavers.

Ndlovu’s record runs through the same institutions. He was regional secretary of the ANC’s Bushbuckridge region from 1995, then a ward councillor, municipal chief whip and member of the mayoral committee responsible for infrastructure. He later served as MEC for cooperative governance and traditional affairs, the provincial portfolio that oversees municipalities, before becoming premier in 2024. He has since secured another term as ANC provincial chairperson.

That history cuts both ways for voters. It is the strongest claim to local knowledge any candidate in the province can make, and it also means there is little distance between the man asking for another mandate and the municipal and provincial administrations that have held the mandate until now.

Wednesday’s election does not decide whether Ndlovu remains premier. It decides who governs municipalities across Mpumalanga, Bushbuckridge among them. But as ANC provincial chairperson he has a direct stake in whether the party holds its traditional ground, and a marked slip in a stronghold of this size would be read well beyond the municipality’s borders.

The province’s own government has acknowledged continuing pressure from unemployment, poverty, water shortages and deteriorating infrastructure, and says it has committed resources to public services and infrastructure across Mpumalanga. Whether that has changed enough for voters is the question the count will answer.

For the opposition parties, the task is to turn dissatisfaction into votes in a municipality where the ANC’s organisational roots are deep. For the ANC, it is to persuade residents that the better life promised for three decades is still coming.