The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has formally declared the 2026 local government elections free and fair, with chairperson Mosotho Moepya confirming the result at the National Results Operation Centre in Midrand on Sunday evening, 8 November. All 213 municipal councils have now been finalised, closing out a count that stretched over several days as the commission worked through hundreds of objections before it could certify the outcome.
According to the IEC’s own results, the African National Congress (ANC) took 30.76 percent of the national vote, down sharply from the 45.59 percent it won in the 2021 local elections. The Democratic Alliance (DA) finished second on 24.64 percent, up from 21.66 percent, while uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), which did not exist as a registered party at the last local government poll, took 9.76 percent in its first local contest. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) fell to 6.22 percent from 10.31 percent in 2021, and ActionSA more than doubled its support to 5.67 percent. Independents and smaller parties collectively accounted for roughly 23 percent of the vote.
Turnout rose to an estimated 52 percent of registered voters, according to the IEC’s turnout figures reported by The Witness, up from 45.9 percent in 2021, with close to 14.9 million of South Africa’s 29.2 million registered voters casting ballots.
A more fragmented local government
The headline consequence for business is fragmentation. Of the 213 municipalities, only 74 returned an outright majority for a single party, meaning the remaining 139 will be governed by some form of coalition or minority administration. The Mail & Guardian’s analysis of the final IEC figures shows the ANC retains outright control of 53 councils and leads in a further 128, the DA has outright control of 12 and leads in 32, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) controls 5 and leads in 19, and MK controls 3 and leads in 19.
Among the metros, BusinessTech’s tally of the final metro counts shows the DA leading in five of South Africa’s eight metros: Johannesburg (34.79 percent), Tshwane (34.37 percent), Ekurhuleni (30.68 percent), Nelson Mandela Bay (44.17 percent) and Cape Town, where it crossed 56 percent and retained the only outright majority among the metros. The ANC leads in Buffalo City and Mangaung, while MK topped the poll in eThekwini with 38.29 percent, ahead of the DA on 25.45 percent and the ANC on 16.43 percent. Everywhere except Cape Town, the leading party will need a coalition partner, a confidence-and-supply arrangement, or a minority administration to form a council executive and elect a mayor.
What changed government means for firms dealing with municipalities
Businesses that hold municipal accounts, bid for municipal tenders, or rely on local infrastructure and billing systems should expect a period of transition rather than any single dramatic policy shift. A change in the governing coalition, or a move from outright control to a multi-party arrangement, typically affects business in a few concrete ways rather than through grand policy reversals.
First, tender and procurement processes often slow down during a mayoral transition. New mayoral committees need to be constituted, portfolio allocations negotiated between coalition partners, and municipal manager and chief financial officer appointments sometimes revisited, all of which can delay sign-off on pending infrastructure and supply contracts until the new administration’s committees are up and running. Daily Maverick’s reporting on the Johannesburg talks notes that councils have 14 days from the IEC’s declaration to elect a mayor and speaker, a window during which ordinary council business, including tender approvals, can stall.
Second, rates and billing stability is a direct function of administrative continuity. Municipal revenue and billing systems depend on functioning finance departments; a change of coalition does not usually alter the billing system itself, but a contested or unstable executive can delay budget adoption, tariff reviews, or the resolution of long-standing billing disputes that businesses have raised.
Third, procurement priorities can shift with new political leadership even where the underlying supply chain rules (set nationally under the Municipal Finance Management Act and related regulations) stay the same. A new coalition may reorder which capital projects get prioritised in the medium-term budget, which can matter to firms in construction, engineering and facilities management that plan around municipal capital programmes.
Finally, continuity of service delivery, water, electricity distribution, waste collection and road maintenance, depends more on the administrative capacity of a municipality’s officials than on which party holds the mayoral chain. Where coalitions have previously proven unstable, as in Johannesburg and Tshwane over the past several years, businesses have reported that frequent changes in mayoral leadership correlate with slower decision-making on maintenance backlogs and capital projects, even when day-to-day service delivery by officials continues.
For now, the practical advice for businesses with municipal exposure is to track council sittings and mayoral elections in the specific municipalities where they operate over the coming fortnight, rather than assume national vote-share trends translate directly into local policy change.
What we could not confirm
- The precise coalition agreements and mayoral appointments for Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni, which were still under negotiation as this article was prepared and had not been finalised in any source consulted.
- A small discrepancy between sources on total voter numbers (some report approximately 14.9 million, others approximately 15.6 million), which we have not been able to resolve against the IEC’s own published turnout statement.
- Ward-by-ward or smaller-municipality results beyond the metros and the national party-by-party control figures reported above.
