The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has officially declared the final results of the 2026 local government elections, with chairperson Mosotho Moepya confirming on Sunday that all 213 municipal councils have now been finalised. Among the results that will matter most to business is Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality in the Eastern Cape, where the African National Congress has lost its outright majority for the first time since it took control of the metro in 1995.
According to The Citizen’s report of the final metro results, the ANC finished on 41.93% of the vote in Buffalo City, well short of the 50% needed to govern alone. The United Democratic Movement surged into second place with 18.39%, its best-ever showing in the metro after never previously breaking 1% there. The Democratic Alliance followed on 16.85%, with the Economic Freedom Fighters on 6.79% and the SACP on 4.45%. Smaller parties, including the African Transformation Movement, the Patriotic Alliance, ActionSA, the Freedom Front Plus and MK, each secured between roughly 1% and 2%.
No single party can govern alone
With no party close to a majority, Buffalo City now faces the same coalition arithmetic already playing out in several of South Africa’s metros, a point confirmed in national reporting on the declared results. UDM mayoral candidate Nqabayomzi Kwankwa has indicated his party sees itself as the main vehicle for change in the metro and has suggested the ANC is not his party’s first choice of coalition partner, though no agreement had been struck at the time of writing. For a metro that has been run by a single dominant party for three decades, the shift means council decisions on budgets, tenders and senior appointments will now depend on negotiation between at least two, and more likely three or four, parties.
That matters immediately for business. Buffalo City, which includes East London and Bhisho, is the Eastern Cape’s second-largest metro and a hub for automotive component manufacturing, agro-processing and the provincial government itself. A fragmented council raises the obvious question of whether a new coalition can agree quickly enough on a budget and an executive mayor to avoid the kind of administrative paralysis that has hit coalition-run metros elsewhere in the country since 2016.
What a coalition means for municipal contracts
Coalition governments change how municipal procurement works in practice, even when the underlying supply chain management rules stay the same. New coalitions typically review committee chairs, including those overseeing tenders and infrastructure, and incoming officials often pause or re-examine contracts signed under the previous administration. Businesses that supply or contract with the municipality, from construction firms building roads and housing to service providers running waste and water contracts, should expect slower decision-making in the short term while a new governing arrangement beds down, and should budget for the possibility of renewed scrutiny of contracts awarded before the election.
Ratepayers’ associations and business chambers in coalition-run cities such as Johannesburg and Tshwane have repeatedly flagged billing disputes, stalled capital projects and leadership instability as side-effects of multi-party councils, a pattern widely reported over the past two council terms. Buffalo City has its own recent history of governance strain, having been placed under provincial administrative support in the past over service delivery failures, so the margin for a bumpy transition is smaller than in a metro starting from a stronger base.
Rates stability and service delivery the real test
For local business owners, the practical questions are rates increases, electricity and water reliability, and whether refuse and infrastructure maintenance contracts continue uninterrupted. A coalition under strain has, in other metros, struggled to pass budgets on time, which can delay capital spending on roads and bulk infrastructure that manufacturers and logistics operators rely on. Buffalo City’s business community, including the East London-based automotive supply chain that feeds plants such as Mercedes-Benz South Africa, has a direct stake in the new council reaching a stable governing agreement quickly.
A wider provincial signal
The scale of the swing against the ANC in Buffalo City, a drop from an outright majority to barely 42%, mirrors the broader national trend confirmed in the Mail & Guardian’s analysis of the IEC’s final declaration, in which the ANC’s national vote share fell to around 30.76%, with the DA and ActionSA making gains in several metros nationally. For businesses operating across more than one municipality in the Eastern Cape, Buffalo City is now a test case for how quickly South Africa’s newer coalition municipalities can translate contested election results into a functioning, investment-friendly administration.
The IEC has said all councils must convene their first sittings within 14 days of the declaration, which will force Buffalo City’s parties to resolve the mayoral question quickly, giving the local business community an early read on how stable the next five years are likely to be.
