By Johnathan Paoli
More than 120 municipal councils are heading for coalition negotiations after Wednesday’s local government elections, with nearly two-thirds of councils where counting has been completed failing to produce an outright majority.
According to election figures compiled from Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) data, 122 of the 191 councils where counting had been completed were hung, while just 69 had produced outright majorities.
The figures mean that 63.9% of the councils with completed counts will require agreements between political parties or councillors to establish governing majorities.
By Saturday morning, counting had been completed in about 98.6% of the country’s 23,696 voting districts.
In the 2021 local government elections, the IEC reported 66 hung councils nationally.
READ| Election Satisfaction Survey: Fed-up South Africans turn their backs on ballot box
The coalition landscape will include several of South Africa’s largest metros, where the leading parties have failed to secure the majority of council seats needed to govern alone.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, where counting has been completed, the DA emerged as the largest party with 53 of the council’s 120 seats, eight short of the 61 needed for an outright majority.
The ANC faces a similar challenge in Buffalo City, where it secured 38 seats in the 100-member council, leaving it 13 seats short of a majority.
In Mangaung, the ANC emerged with 36 seats in the 101-member council, requiring the support of at least 15 additional councillors to reach the governing threshold of 51 seats.
Coalition negotiations are also expected to be central to the formation of governments in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and eThekwini, although counting in these metropolitan municipalities had not yet been completed at the time of the latest available results.
The DA was leading the count in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, while the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP) was ahead in eThekwini.
READ| ActionSA: Moya for another five years, says Beaumont
However, the leading parties in these metros remained below the outright majority threshold in the provisional results.
The DA was maintaining a majority-level share of the vote in Cape Town, although its final council seat allocation had yet to be confirmed.
Nationally, the ANC remained the largest political party with about 31% of the combined ward and proportional representation vote, followed by the DA on 24.6%.
The MK Party was in third place with 9.6%, followed by the EFF on 6.3%, ActionSA on 5.6% and the IFP on 4.7%.
Despite retaining its national lead, the ANC’s support has not translated into outright control of many municipalities where it secured the largest share of votes.
The same challenge confronts the DA and MK Party in councils where they emerged ahead of their competitors without winning more than half the available seats.
The results also place smaller parties in potentially influential positions during negotiations.
The EFF, ActionSA, IFP, Patriotic Alliance and other parties could become important partners in municipalities where larger parties require additional seats to establish governing majorities.
However, the distribution of seats within individual councils, rather than national vote shares, will determine which governing arrangements are mathematically possible.
A hung council does not automatically mean that the party receiving the most votes will lead the municipality. The election of mayors and other council office-bearers will depend on the support parties can assemble within each council.
The IEC is expected to announce the final results on Sunday at 5.30pm.
INSIDE POLITICS
