ANC falls to 31% in South Africa's local elections, its worst result since 1994

A 31% verdict, thirty-two years after the ANC took power

On Sunday 8 November 2026, South Africa's governing African National Congress learned the scale of its defeat. With 99 percent of votes counted in the municipal elections of Wednesday 4 November, the ANC stood at 30.81 percent nationally, according to the Electoral Commission's results dashboard; its worst showing since the party led South Africa out of apartheid in 1994. The Democratic Alliance held about 25 percent, and Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe party about 10 percent.

The ANC won an outright majority in none of the eight metropolitan municipalities, including Johannesburg and Pretoria, and now faces two weeks of coalition bargaining over who governs the cities. Final results were expected at 6pm on Sunday (16:00 GMT).

The vote, for 257 municipal councils, was the first full test of the country's mood since the ANC lost its parliamentary majority in 2024 and entered a Government of National Unity with nine other parties. Turnout rose to about 54.5 percent, up from 46 percent in 2021; a sign voters turned out to punish the ruling party rather than stay away.

What the count shows, metro by metro

The collapse is measured in decades. The ANC took 64.9 percent in the municipal elections of 2006, 45.6 percent in 2021, and just over 40 percent in the 2024 general election. At 30.81 percent, it has lost almost 15 points in five years and more than half its 2006 share. It won 3,236 council seats, down from 4,545 in 2021 and 5,633 in 2011, and controls only 53 of 213 councils outright. Hung councils have more than doubled since 2021, from 66 to 135.

As the Bureau reported before polling day, the vote was billed as the election that could end the ANC's era of dominance; and the metros delivered that verdict. In Johannesburg, the Democratic Alliance leads with about 35 percent against about 20 percent for the ANC, which held 58.56 percent of the city in 2011. In Tshwane, which includes Pretoria, the ANC fell to 20.22 percent from 55.32 percent in 2011. In eThekwini, the Durban municipality, the ANC has collapsed to 16.46 percent after a 25.6-point drop since 2021, while Zuma's MK party dominates the city.

Only Cape Town resisted: the DA holds more than 60 percent and is set to retain its outright majority. Nationally the DA stands at about 25 percent, up from 21.7 percent in 2021, with the EFF on 6.2 percent and ActionSA on 5.7 percent. DA leader Geordin Hill-Lewis said his party had won one million black voters.

What the count still hides

The figures are near-final, not certified. The Electoral Commission was still managing more than 800 complaints from political parties on Saturday, with about 106 unresolved, and the final seat allocations for the 257 councils have not been published. The last 1 percent could still move margins in tightly hung councils.

Nobody yet knows who will govern the big cities. No party won more than half the vote in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Nelson Mandela Bay or Mangaung, and the coalitions to run them are unnegotiated. It is not known whether the ANC will bargain for a share of power, support rival administrations from outside, or sit in opposition; an option its secretary-general publicly left open on Saturday.

President Cyril Ramaphosa had not addressed the result as of Saturday evening, and his own standing inside the party is now an open question. South African reporting says he is thinking over his own future ahead of the ANC's December 2027 elective conference. Whether Helen Zille becomes Johannesburg's mayor depends on coalition arithmetic not yet done.

The end of one-party local rule

One party has governed South Africa locally since the first democratic municipal elections. That era is over. The ANC still leads nationally, but no big city is reliably its own, and every major council must be assembled from parties that spent the campaign attacking each other. Coalition government, already the national reality since 2024, has now become the local reality too.

The verdict is, above all, a verdict on delivery. Voters punished the party for failing basic services, water and electricity, in the cities it runs, alongside corruption scandals and unemployment above 34 percent. The pattern now reaches the party's own heartlands: KwaZulu-Natal, where the MK party and the Inkatha Freedom Party ran ahead of the ANC, and the Gauteng metros, where the DA and ActionSA now set the terms.

The result also reframes the 2029 general election. A party that cannot hold Johannesburg, Pretoria or Durban cannot assume it will hold the country, and the two weeks of coalition bargaining ahead will be watched as a rehearsal for the national contest: who the ANC can still deal with, who the DA can still work with, and whether the liberation movement's bond with its voters can be rebuilt or has broken. Voters elsewhere delivered their own verdicts this week: America's midterm count showed the same restless pattern.

How a liberation movement lost the cities

The ANC's decline is not a single bad night; it is a fifteen-year slope. The party won nearly 70 percent of the national vote in 2004, and has fallen in every local election since 2011: 64.9 percent in 2006, 45.6 percent in 2021, 40.2 percent in 2024, 30.81 percent now. Three forces drove it down.

The first is delivery. Municipal government is where South Africans meet the state, taps, lights, potholes, refuse, and the ANC-run metros have failed at it for years. The DA's Johannesburg campaign was built on exactly that ground: its mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, campaigned on fixing potholes and leaking water pipes. The second is the splintering of the liberation vote. Zuma's MK party, contesting its first municipal election, took third place nationally and seized the ANC's eThekwini stronghold; the EFF and ActionSA took the rest. The third is turnout with intent: at 54.5 percent, participation rose sharply from 2021, and as Oxford Economics Africa's Louw Nel put it, ANC voters did not stay away; they showed up and voted for someone else.

A fourth factor is the party's own honesty: Mbalula called the result catastrophic and said the ANC would not go begging for positions; candour that may mark the start of a rebuild, or an admission that the rebuild starts from opposition benches.

What this result changes beyond the metros

First, the national unity government. The ANC and the DA govern South Africa together nationally, and now they must bargain against each other locally in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. Every local deal will be read in Pretoria as a signal about the national partnership, and every national row priced into the local talks. In Israel, certified results moved a deadlocked election into coalition talks the same week; South Africa's version will be longer, because the partners are also rivals.

Second, Ramaphosa's authority. A president who has not yet addressed his party's worst result, and whose future inside the party is openly discussed a year before its December 2027 elective conference, governs on borrowed time until the ANC decides what this defeat means. The secretary-general's timetable, an assessment on Monday, a National Executive Committee meeting on Thursday, is the machinery of that decision.

Third, the kingmakers. The MK party, the EFF and ActionSA now hold the balance in the hung metros, and their price will be mayoralties, budgets and policy. Fourth, the 2029 runway: the DA has shown it can win black voters and run the biggest city; the ANC has shown it can fall below a third and still lead. And fifth, the cities themselves: hung councils with fragile coalitions have a record of instability, and the services voters punished the ANC for failing now fall to governments that do not yet exist.

The dates and decisions to watch

Final results are declared on Sunday evening, 8 November. The ANC completes its internal assessment on Monday 9 November, and its National Executive Committee meets on Thursday 12 November to set the principles for coalition talks, with its position communicated on Friday 13 November.

Parties then have 14 days from the declaration to strike deals before newly elected councils hold their first meetings and choose mayors. The biggest prize is Johannesburg: the DA's Helen Zille says the party with the most votes should lead, and has said her party could govern with either ActionSA or the ANC. In eThekwini, the question is whether the MK party converts its lead into the mayoralty. In Pretoria, the DA must decide whether to govern Tshwane with partners or share power with the beaten ANC. As in other deadlocked votes this season; in Israel a rival was chosen over the incumbent to form the next government; the count is only the beginning; the government is negotiated after it.