Early tallies from South Africa’s municipal elections point to a sharp drop in support for the African National Congress, the party that has governed the country since apartheid ended in 1994, in what amounts to an early verdict on the state of local service delivery.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, a state institute whose forecasts have proved accurate in previous elections, published a projection on X indicating the ANC is on track to win about 31.7% of the vote at the national level. The figure is based on an extrapolation of the early official counts from Wednesday’s vote.
The same modelling puts the Democratic Alliance on 25.7%, former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party, or MKP, on 9%, the Economic Freedom Fighters on 6.1% and ActionSA on 5.1%.
The backdrop to these numbers is a long-running deterioration in municipal performance. A series of opinion polls conducted before the election had already predicted the ANC’s decline, in a backlash against failing services in many municipalities. That operational record, rather than any single campaign moment, appears to have shaped voter behaviour.
The scale of the shift becomes clear when set against the previous local vote. In the last municipal elections in 2021, the ANC won 45.6% support, the DA 21.7% and the EFF 10.3%. The MKP did not exist at that point; it was only formed in 2023.
The national projections, however, will not on their own determine who runs the country’s major towns. Support for a number of the parties is concentrated in specific areas, meaning control of individual councils will depend on local rather than national patterns. One example is the port city of Durban in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, where Zuma’s MKP could make inroads.
The official tallies counted so far tell a similar story to the projections. With 25% of the vote counted, the ANC had 32% support, the DA 28.9%, MKP 5.9%, the EFF 5.4%, the Patriotic Alliance 4.2%, Freedom Front Plus 4.1%, ActionSA at 3% and the Inkatha Freedom Party 2.7%.
A caution applies to these early figures. Early results are not always a reliable gauge of party support, because votes from urban areas, where the DA gets most of its backing, are tallied first. The final distribution could therefore shift as rural counts come in.
Meanwhile, the electoral commission is expected to release the outcome of the local government vote and the allocation of seats on the 257 municipal councils over the weekend. Those allocations will settle the practical question of who governs each municipality, and by extension who is responsible for fixing the services that voters appear to have punished the ruling party for failing to deliver.
The political consequences extend beyond the councils themselves. The ANC ruled the country outright for three decades after 1994, but lost its national majority in 2024 when it won just over 40% support. It then entered into a coalition with the DA and eight smaller rivals to form a so-called government of national unity. That alliance has prioritised economic growth and job creation, and its stability is now a live question. Investors will be watching for any surge in backing for populist opposition parties and what that could mean for the coalition’s cohesion.
For now, the numbers suggest voters have delivered a pointed judgement on how their municipalities are run. Whether the parties that gain ground can convert that verdict into functioning local government will be tested once the seats are allocated and the new councils take up the work of delivery.