As the dust settles after the local government elections, focus will now turn to the first municipal council meetings amid clear indications that hung councils will be the order of the day in some of SA’s 257 municipalities.
Hung councils, in which no political party wins an outright majority, mean that coalitions will continue to dominate the political landscape. This means the election of mayors and speakers, among other crucial positions, will be more complicated and fraught as parties jostle for power.
So, what will happen immediately after the results have been confirmed?
According to the Municipal Structures Act, which regulates the process of assigning powers and functions to local government, a council must meet and appoint its representatives within 14 days after the result of the election of a local council has been declared.
The first order of business would ordinarily be the election of the speaker, the councillor who will chair council meetings, maintain order and ensure the council meets at least quarterly.
The act states that the municipal manager of the municipality, or, if the municipal manager is not available, a person designated by the MEC for local government in the province, presides over the election of a speaker. A councillor may not hold the office of speaker and mayor or executive mayor at the same time.
Generally, the party with the majority of votes wins the crucial speaker position. But in hung councils, where horse-trading between political rivals is commonplace, the position is invariably up for grabs.
The formal election of the executive mayor, who is essentially the face or highest rank official of a municipal government, or the CEO of the city, is undoubtedly the major event after local polls. The party with the majority of votes usually takes control of the mayoral chain.
The act suggests that only a majority of votes cast by council members present are required to elect a mayor. In other words, even if all councillors are not present, a mayor can still be elected.
In a previous blog post, constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos offered a detailed explanation of the processes that must be followed after local government elections.
Zooming in on the election of the mayor, De Vos states that if no mayoral candidate receives a majority of the votes (which may occur if no party holds at least 50% of the seats in a municipal council), the candidate who receives the lowest number of votes must be eliminated and a further vote must be taken on the remaining candidates.
This procedure, De Vos highlights in his post, must be repeated until a candidate receives an absolute majority of the votes. If no party wins a majority of seats in a municipal council that has opted for an executive mayoral system, the largest political parties in the council will obviously attempt to form a formal coalition with other political parties or independent councillors to secure a governing majority.
SA’s local government elections are complicated, not least because of the mixed-member electoral system.
In a recent article published by the Washington-based non-profit public policy organisation, Brookings Institution, political scientist Danielle Resnick explains that the mixed-member electoral system for municipal elections means that half the seats on the councils are chosen through proportional representation — whereby the parties receive seats in proportion to the share of votes they receive — and half are chosen through a single-member constituency-based system so that individual candidates who receive the most votes in their ward gain their ward’s seat.
Compared with a system of direct elections for mayor by voters, SA’s approach encourages more upward accountability to the party, causing the local elections to strongly reflect parties’ organisational capabilities and coherence, Resnick states.
The shape of local government, which is the coalface of service delivery, thus still very much depends on political parties. How the horse-trading for the top positions unfolds in the next few days could make or break municipalities.
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