South Africa's 2026 Local Elections Show ANC-DA Tie, MK Surge in eThekwini

Polling data released two months before the November 4 vote indicates South Africa's governing party faces its most competitive urban contest since the end of apartheid, with a regional party...

South Africa's African National Congress and the Democratic Alliance are polling within single digits of each other in the country's two largest metros ahead of the November 4 local government elections, according to an Ipsos survey published by Daily Maverick on September 3, 2026.

In Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city by population, the ANC leads with 31 percent support against the DA's 27 percent, according to the Ipsos poll. In Tshwane, the administrative capital, the DA holds a narrow lead at 31 percent, placing it ahead of the ANC in that metro. The Ipsos polling data was cited by Daily Maverick as the basis for characterizing the overall contest as a close race.

The most definitive finding in the Ipsos survey concerns eThekwini, the metro encompassing Durban. Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe Party, commonly known as MK, registers 55 percent support there, according to the same Daily Maverick report. That figure would represent majority support in a single metro for a party that did not exist as a registered political force before 2023.

Zuma, a former South African president who served from 2009 to 2018, founded MK after a protracted legal and political conflict with the ANC. The party ran in South Africa's May 2024 national general election and received approximately 14.6 percent of the national vote, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa's certified results, finishing third nationally. Its support was concentrated heavily in KwaZulu-Natal province, where eThekwini is located.

The Ipsos poll was released approximately eight weeks before voting day. Daily Maverick noted that pollsters cautioned final outcomes will depend on factors not yet determined, though the report as summarized did not specify which variables those analysts identified. What would clarify the picture further is additional polling from independent firms covering smaller metros and ward-level contests.

The ANC has governed South Africa nationally without interruption since 1994, but its share of the national vote fell below 40 percent for the first time in the May 2024 general election, according to Electoral Commission of South Africa data. That result forced the ANC to form a Government of National Unity with the DA and other parties. Local elections, held separately from national contests, have historically shown different voting patterns, with opposition parties performing better in wealthier urban wards.

The DA has previously controlled the City of Cape Town and held the Tshwane metro from 2016 to 2021, when it lost control following a coalition collapse. The DA retook Tshwane in 2021 elections with coalition support, according to South African Municipal Demarcation Board records. The Johannesburg metro has changed administrative hands multiple times since 2016 through shifting coalition arrangements.

If MK achieves majority control of eThekwini, it would become the first party other than the ANC to govern that metro since the post-apartheid municipal system was established. EThekwini is South Africa's third-largest metro by population and a major port economy. The implications for service delivery contracts, municipal staffing, and intergovernmental fiscal relations between a MK-controlled eThekwini and the national Government of National Unity are not yet known. Those questions would become concrete only after election results are certified and coalition or majority governance arrangements are formalized.

South African local elections determine control of 257 municipalities, including eight metropolitan municipalities. The Electoral Commission of South Africa administers the vote. Results are typically announced within days of polling. Voter registration data as of the last published Electoral Commission update would indicate the size of the eligible electorate in each metro, though those figures were not included in the Ipsos or Daily Maverick reporting summarized here.

The Ipsos survey methodology, including sample size, margin of error, and fieldwork dates, was not detailed in the available summary of the Daily Maverick report. Those figures, if published by Ipsos or Daily Maverick in the full report, would allow for a more precise assessment of the poll's predictive range in each metro.