South Africa's 4 November Local Elections Produce Over 100 Hung Councils
With coalition negotiations now underway across the country, the outcome of these talks will determine whether municipal services in cities including Nelson Mandela Bay can be restored, setting a...
South Africa's 4 November 2026 local government elections produced more than 100 hung councils nationwide, leaving political parties with 14 days under electoral law to negotiate coalition agreements that will determine control of municipalities across the country, according to Daily Maverick.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, one of the most closely watched contests, the Democratic Alliance emerged as the largest single party, winning 53 of 120 council seats, according to Daily Maverick. That result falls well short of the 61 seats required for an outright majority, meaning the DA must secure support from one or more smaller parties to govern the metro.
The DA has begun approaching potential coalition partners in Nelson Mandela Bay, according to the same Daily Maverick report. The specific parties being courted and the terms under discussion have not been publicly confirmed as of publication.
Nelson Mandela Bay, which includes the city of Port Elizabeth, has experienced prolonged failures in water supply, electricity delivery, and refuse removal services. Daily Maverick reported that restoring these basic services is the central policy issue framing coalition discussions in that municipality.
Across South Africa more broadly, political analysts cited by Daily Maverick argue that successful coalition negotiations will require parties to prioritize constitutional principles and citizen needs over party, ideological, or patronage interests. The 14-day window for coalition formation is set by South Africa's Municipal Structures Act, which governs the formation of local government after elections.
The scale of the hung council results, with over 100 municipalities lacking an outright majority, is a structural consequence of South Africa's proportional representation system at the local government level, which distributes seats in metro and local councils according to vote shares across both ward and proportional representation ballots.
South Africa held its first post-apartheid local elections in 1995. Since 2021, coalition governance has become more prevalent at the local level as the African National Congress's vote share has declined in major urban centers, a trend that continued in the 4 November 2026 results, though final national tallies across all municipalities had not been fully published as of this report.
The 2021 local elections similarly produced several hung councils, including in Nelson Mandela Bay, Johannesburg, and Tshwane, resulting in unstable coalition arrangements that in some cases collapsed within months. The 2026 results appear to have extended and deepened that pattern, based on the more-than-100 hung council figure reported by Daily Maverick.
What will determine whether the 2026 coalition agreements prove more durable than their 2021 counterparts remains unclear. Daily Maverick's analysis of negotiation strategies identified written coalition agreements with explicit governance mandates, dispute resolution mechanisms, and defined policy deliverables as the structural features most associated with stable municipal coalitions in South Africa's recent experience.
No independent audit of all 2026 local election results had been published by the Independent Electoral Commission as of this article's publication date. Full results, seat allocations, and coalition agreements across all affected municipalities are expected to become clearer as the 14-day negotiation window progresses.