The Electoral Commission of South Africa faces its largest logistical test yet on 4 November, when 546 political parties and almost 137 000 candidates will contest just over 10 500 council seats in the 2026 local government elections. Dr Oscar van Heerden, research associate and senior research fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership, has described the sheer number of parties as a logistical nightmare for the IEC, arguing that new legislation is needed to curb the ease with which parties can participate in elections.
Independent election analyst Michael Atkins, while agreeing that a staggering number of parties were “a nuisance”, said proactive mitigations were possible “with careful legislative amendments”. “For example, if ward votes did not count for PR (proportional representation) seat allocations, then ward elections would tend to have only a few candidates and be much more meaningful,” Atkins told the Mail & Guardian.
Additional reference context is available at https://mg.co.za/news/south-africa/2026-10-30-a-z-guide-to-the-2026-local-government-elections/.
The commission’s readiness has drawn close scrutiny. Professor Sethulego Matebesi of the University of Free State and head of the Department of Sociology said IEC readiness was “an interesting aspect of this election”, anticipating “a technically sound election” but warning that post-election litigation was “the real risk for the IEC”. “The deadline was defensible and so was the Constitutional Court’s ruling for the ANC,” he said, while also flagging a reprinting risk, since 66% of the ballots were already reprinted. He cautioned that litigation after the vote is the real danger for the commission, against the background of the outstanding MK Party dashboard outage remaining a concern.
The IEC, for its part, has assured the public that systems are in place to avert any vote rigging, and has vowed there will be no repeat of the 2024 polls, when the leader board at the national results centre went blank for two hours. To that end, the commission is deploying an additional 14 000 voter management devices and strengthening its election systems, with an additional 40 000 gadgets already procured to improve voting efficiency, particularly at heavily populated stations.
Delivery on the ground extends to voters who cannot cast their ballots on election day due to illness, work or old age. The IEC has approved 2.6 million special votes and scheduled more than 600 000 home visits for Monday and Tuesday. A total of 80% of approved home visits are for voters older than 60, while women account for 74% of approved special votes.
Meanwhile, with 29.9 million South Africans registered on the voters’ roll, the Mail & Guardian has compiled an A to Z guide to the 2026 local government polls to answer frequently asked questions.
Before heading to a voting station, voters can confirm their registration status, check their ward details and voters’ roll sequence number, and find their voting station by SMSing their identity number to 32810. The voting station finder is at https://maps.elections.org.za.
On voting day, each voter receives two ballots: one for a person to represent the local geographic ward, and a second, the proportional representation or “PR ballot”, for the party the voter would like in charge of the municipality. The ward vote can go to a party representative or an independent candidate, the person residents approach when confronted with problems such as electricity, lack of municipal service delivery or safety concerns.
Council seats are determined by a quota: the total votes cast in the election on both the PR and ward ballots are added together and divided by the number of seats available in the municipality. All votes cast for a party on the PR ballot and for that party’s candidates on ward ballots are combined, and each party’s total is divided by the quota to determine how many seats it is entitled to. Ward seats already won are subtracted from that total, and the remainder is allocated to councillors on the party’s PR list so that the proportion of votes roughly matches the proportion of seats.
Municipal councils serve a five-year term, operating at metropolitan, local and district levels. Under the constitution, any citizen who can vote for a municipal council can also stand for election to one, unless they work for that municipality and are paid by it, work for the state elsewhere and are disqualified under national legislation, cannot vote for the National Assembly, have been declared insolvent and not yet rehabilitated, have been declared of unsound mind by a court, were sentenced to more than 12 months in prison without the option of a fine in South Africa or abroad and fewer than five years have passed since completing that sentence, are a sitting member of the National Assembly, NCOP or a provincial legislature, or already sit on a different municipal council in another category.
Voters must bring a copy of their South African identity document, either the green barcoded ID book or a smart ID card. The IEC has recruited about 188 500 electoral officials, including presiding officers, deputy presiding officers, area managers and electoral officers, all of whom have undergone training to ensure efficiency. Government will deploy a countrywide massive number of police officers and members of the SA National Defence Force to patrol all areas.
The commission has also moved to protect the integrity of the process itself. It has entered a multi-stakeholder partnership with leading civil society organisations and online platforms, signing a framework of cooperation with Meta Inc., Google, TikTok and Microsoft to help with concrete mitigation interventions to thwart the dissemination of disinformation during the election period. For the first time, the IEC has promulgated an additional Code of Conduct on measures to counter disinformation, strengthening measures to address false or misleading information. Contesting parties have signed the Electoral Code of Conduct, promoting free, fair and peaceful campaigning.
Transparency measures include 109 accredited domestic observer organisations, briefed to undertake independent and informed observation across all provinces, and a briefing for foreign diplomats based in South Africa on key electoral milestones, election processes and the IEC’s state of readiness to deliver the polls.
The national results operations centre is located at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand, with provincial offices at East London International Convention Centre in the Eastern Cape; 24 Ben Jones Street, Hamilton, Bloemfontein in the Free State; Alberton Civic Centre in Johannesburg; Durban International Convention Centre in KwaZulu-Natal; Protea Hotel Polokwane Ranch Resort in Limpopo; ANEW Hotel Sports and Conferencing in White River, Mpumalanga; The Light House, 40 Boshoff Road, Ernestville, Kimberley in the Northern Cape; 50 First Street, Industrial Site, Mahikeng in the North West; and Century City Convention Centre in Cape Town.
Whether the commission’s devices, officials and safeguards hold up under the weight of 546 contesting parties, and whether the courts stay quiet afterwards, will define how this delivery effort is judged.