Fixing local government is the ANC’s strategy to stop voter decline. As the country moves towards the local government elections scheduled to take place between 2 November 2026 and 31 January 2027, the ANC has placed municipalities at the centre of its political strategy. Criss-crossing North West this week, ANC leaders saw first-hand the daily struggles facing residents of the platinum province, home to illegal mining, where water does not always flow, the electricity supply is intermittent, unemployment is skyrocketing and communities feel unsafe.
These problems are not unique to North West, but are common across the country – and where basic services fail, voters increasingly respond by turning away from the ANC and/or the polls. Against this backdrop, the ANC’s January 8 Statement delivered at the weekend set the tone for what President Cyril Ramaphosa called a year of “decisive action”. At the heart of his address was fixing local government.
Last year, the Auditor General’s 2023/24 report painted a bleak picture of local government, with only 41 out of 257 municipalities achieving a clean audit – about 16% of all municipalities. Between 2019 and 2024, the former governing party’s voter support dropped by 17 percentage points nationally to 40%, leading to the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU), which included the Democratic Alliance, Inkatha Freedom Party and the Patriotic Alliance. The party also failed to garner majorities in provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape and Gauteng.
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Delivering the party’s mid-term report in December, secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the party’s decline had been long-standing rather than a sudden rupture. According to Mbalula’s analysis, a mid-term review between the party’s 2022 and 2027 national elective conferences, the ANC’s misfortune dates back to 2016. “The electoral setback suffered by the ANC and the democratic movement began in 2016 with the loss of major metros, accelerating with the emergence of over 80 hung councils after the 2021 local elections, and culminated in the 2024 strategic setback when the ANC lost its outright majority in Parliament, Gauteng and KZN,” reads his 294-page report.
In Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay and eThekwini metros, the ANC lost control in the 2021 local elections and was pushed to the opposition benches. Of SA’s eight metros, it only won above 50% in Buffalo City and Mangaung.
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