The machinery of South African local government faces its next stress test on 4 November 2026, when municipal elections will show whether the country’s coalition structures can still function in practice. The government of national unity (GNU) has already struggled to operate. A weaker African National Congress at the polls would make that struggle harder.
The operational reality inside the GNU has been shaped by how the ANC has run it. The party has behaved as if it were still a majority government, insisting its own policies automatically become government policy rather than negotiating joint coalition policies, the norm for successful national coalitions elsewhere. That conduct has been an existential threat to the GNU’s stability. Because the ANC refused to develop common policies with its partners, those partners have been forced to oppose ANC policy in court. If the Democratic Alliance’s vote share lands close to the ANC’s, or above it, the ANC would have to treat the DA as an equal in policy-making and decision-making, forcing a shift away from the current process.
Perception matters too. If the ANC falls below the DA, public perception would crown the DA the largest party in the country, even though the ANC remains the largest in the national government on the strength of its 39.7% in the 2024 national and provincial elections. In either scenario voters would see the ANC as a party that has lost a national election, not merely local ones.
KwaZulu-Natal is where the delivery picture could change most. Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party) may take many municipalities in the province. A controlling win would hand it a governmental powerbase, control of local state policy, and access to state resources and patronage from which to build a stronger national base. That would shrink the ANC’s provincial power even though the ANC sits in the provincial government of unity alongside the DA and the IFP. It would also erode the Economic Freedom Fighters’ base in the province, because many young people who once voted EFF now see the MK Party as the better alternative. A poor Inkatha Freedom Party showing would damage its 2029 prospects; the IFP has battled to sell to voters its strong governance record in the ministries it runs in the national and KwaZulu-Natal governments of unity. A big MK win would also make the party appear larger than it is and encourage disgruntled ANC members to give it a try, boosting its momentum toward 2029.
The EFF’s problem is turnout. It dominates student representative councils at higher education institutions, though SRC election turnout is low and only certain demographics vote consistently, the EFF’s among them. The party will probably take municipal wards in or near campuses where it holds SRC councils. But its youth supporters often do not pitch on election day, and many voters back its populist stances in public without voting it into government, doubting its capacity to govern. Mature black voters also appear not to be a natural EFF constituency.
The Patriotic Alliance (PA) is likely to push the DA in rural Western Cape, the Northern Cape, and parts of the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, having built a seemingly strong branch network in those areas. The PA, MK Party and EFF have copied the ANC’s model of building community branches as campaign troops. By contrast, non-racial, constitutionalist and social democratic parties such as Rise Mzansi and Build One South Africa (Bosa) have not made mass branch-building fundamental to their operations, which is critical for parties seeking mass votes. The DA, meanwhile, is squeezed from two sides: the PA on the populist flank for the coloured vote, arguing that the coloured community has been marginalised under ANC majority government and that the DA has also neglected struggling coloured communities, and the Freedom Front Plus on its right, where it appears to be surging. If the DA fails to grow while the ANC declines and the MK Party, PA and EFF rise, voters will read it as having hit its electoral ceiling. If constitutional and social democratic parties such as Rise Mzansi, Good, Bosa and ActionSA do badly, the question becomes whether they continue as small standalone parties or merge quickly before 2029.
Inside the ANC, the consequences could be severe. A poor national showing against the DA, combined with losses in KwaZulu-Natal to the MK Party, would probably shock the faction-torn party into freefall. It might fuel anti-Ramaphosa factions to rally against the president, abandon him in his fight to prevent impeachment, and push ANC leaders to eject him from the state presidency when a new party president is elected at the 2027 national elective conference, rather than letting him serve until 2029. A bad result would also weaken Ramaphosa’s hand in pushing for a moderate, constitutional and social democratic successor, strengthen populist groups in the party, and possibly propel a populist candidate into the ANC presidency. It would increase sentiment among ANC leaders for a rapprochement with the MK Party and the EFF if those parties do well. A populist ANC president who later became state president might restructure the GNU to include the EFF and MK Party and exclude the former multiparty charter representatives: the DA, IFP and Freedom Front Plus.
These scenarios come from analysis by William Gumede, founder of the Democracy Works Foundation and author of the best-selling Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg), published as “Ramifications of an ANC electoral decline” at https://mg.co.za/thought-leader/2026-10-15-ramifications-of-an-anc-electoral-decline/, based on his discussion of “South Africa’s Next President” at the recent Woordfees in Stellenbosch. Whether the GNU’s operating model survives 4 November 2026 may depend less on who wins votes than on whether its partners can finally build a way of working together.