Gauteng hangs on a knife edge in the 2021 local government elections with all three metros up for grabs. The province’s voters account for more than 23% of the country’s 26-million registered voters, making support in the province’s three metros and local councils critical.
The upcoming municipal polls in Gauteng on November 1 are a stress test for the three biggest parties, the ANC, DA and the EFF, as they each seek to lure voters in a bid to control the majority of the municipal councils across the country’s economic hub.
For the ANC in particular the election will test the public belief in party president Cyril Ramaphosa’s reform agenda which has been punted by the party as an antidote to the “wasted years” of former president Jacob Zuma’s nearly decade long term in office. The ANC performed dismally in the 2016 local government elections when its support in Gauteng fell to 45.59%, far short of the 58,84% majority garnered in 2011.
Within the same period, the DA’s support surged from 33.54% in 2011 to 37.22% in 2016. Having only been formed in 2013, the EFF made significant inroads in Gauteng in 2016 when it garnered 11.45% of the vote, making it the third largest party in the province behind the DA.
Leading up to the local government elections, the ANC has concentrated its election campaigning in Gauteng with Ramaphosa leading campaigns in the party’s stronghold of Soweto during the voter registration weekend and in Ekurhuleni over the past weekend.
Ramaphosa will launch the party’s manifesto on Monday in Tshwane where the DA has been leading a fragile coalition since 2016. The ANC regained Tshwane back from the DA after former mayor Herman Mashaba resigned in 2019 from the opposition party to form his own party, ActionSA.
The ANC’s manifesto launch in the capital is a strategic move by the governing party as it attempts to claw back the lost council, says independent political analyst Ralph Mathekga.
ANC structures in the city have also been mired in vote-rigging and manipulation of candidate lists. Over the weekend councillor candidate Tshepo Motaung was shot dead outside his home as factions within the region continue to battle it out.
There are fears the ANC could lose by a bigger margin in this election, with an Ipsos poll released a week ago showing declining support for the ANC (at 49% from 57.5% in 2019) and DA (18% from 21% in 2019), and significant growth for the EFF at 15% (11% in 2019).
The previous elections when the ANC lost a significant amount of support paved the way for coalitions. In August, ANC Ekurhuleni chair and the metro’s executive mayor, Mzwandile Masina, told Business Day that coalitions are the way to go and could help accelerate service delivery to residents. He said the ANC could enter into a coalition with the EFF as it was not far apart from the governing party in terms of ideology and policies.
The EFF, however, is not interested in coalitions with other parties including the ANC, its provincial chair, Itani Mukwevho, told Business Day.
Local government elections (voters cast their ballots for a political party and a ward councillor to get seats at a municipal level) are primarily about resolving local issues faced by voters such as the provision of basic services like refuse collection and conducting street repairs.
However, for the upcoming polls one of the key considerations facing the Gauteng electorate is which political party has the best policies to fix the economy which has been battered by the pandemic and the recent July riots that left thousands of businesses destroyed and infrastructure worth millions of rand damaged.
Gauteng’s metros and towns have underperformed over recent times after years of mismanagement of resources, corruption and state capture have left a mark. Though the pandemic and the restrictions on movement have increased the number of service delivery protests — which typically rise in an election year — data from consultancy firm Municipal IQ show that Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 21% of all service delivery protests in 2021, indicating growing disgruntlement over long standing issues such as unemployment and crumbling municipal services.
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