Crowded ballots, hung councils and kingmakers: Navigating South Africa’s local elections

South Africa’s sixth democratic local election takes place on November 4 and it can feel like we are in a jungle, searching for a way out.

There are almost 24 000 voting districts across the country, with, at one extreme, 93 voting districts each having more than 6 000 voters; at the other, 19 201 voting districts having fewer than 1 000 voters each.

The voting districts are combined into wards in each municipality and significant differences are found across the country.

Names and numbers

Consider the number and names of parties we have on our ballots this year. They range from the “Aboriginal Gorilla Fighters” to a party known as “Combat”. We compiled a word cloud from the names of the more than 500 contesting parties. The word “African” dominates, with many name combinations being variations of the major parties such as the ANC, DA, Economic Freedom Fighters or the word “independents”.

As you gear up to vote, do not be overwhelmed by the number of parties or persons on your proportional representation (PR) ballot. Across the 257 municipalities, some ballots will list more than 50 parties. Some of the parties who did reasonably well in the 2024 national and provincial elections have also submitted only one name on their PR list, meaning that if they get more than one seat on a council you will have no way of knowing before you vote who its other councillors will be.

Your ward ballot will also probably carry many names and you might be surprised at how many parties and independents are contesting even in your ward.

In many municipalities, one person is standing for all wards. This might seem strange but it is because when the overall proportionality is calculated for a municipality, all the party votes given in the ward and PR ballots are combined to work out what proportion of seats will be allocated to each party.

That is why particularly the larger parties, even if they do not have a potential councillor in a ward to be put on the ballot, will have one of their supporters stand.

Calculating seats

If you are not overwhelmed yet, more complications follow once voting ends and seats are calculated. What if a candidate who stood in two wards wins both? Well, they will have to choose in which ward they want to be the councillor and the IEC will then call a by-election in the other ward/wards.

You might also find that a party wins a lot of wards (you can win with even less than 30% of the vote) and then when the PR seats are calculated, they win a higher proportion of seats overall than they should have.

Ward seats cannot be taken away from them, so that will affect the proportion of seats that other parties get.

Then there will be the final declaration of seats. Here you might also find that some small parties win a seat even though the votes they received are well below the average of other large parties. This might seem confusing but it happens. In 2021 in eThekwini, for example, seven parties each got a seat even though they had more than 30% fewer votes than the large parties.

Once seats are declared it is likely that more than half of the over-500 parties standing on at least one ballot will not have won a seat in any council.

When the counting is done and the seats are allocated, the important, but at times worrying, work begins.

Hung municipalities

In the 2021 elections, more than 80 of our 257 councils were hung. In other words, no party had more than 50% of the councillors in that municipality.

This can lead to coalitions. Larger parties might agree to work together across all municipalities or only in some, such as in provinces.

Alternatively, it might be left to councillors in each municipality to decide who will be mayor, speaker, chief whip and, in the case of mayoral executives, who will be chosen as political heads of portfolios.

Kingmakers

This is where “kingmakers” will start strutting around wanting the party that is hungriest for “control” to see them and give them what they want.

If the results of the 2024 national and provincial elections were repeated at local level, it is likely that we may have well over 100 hung municipalities after November 4.

Fit for service delivery

Once councils are in place many things must unfold but we must build competent, responsive, inclusive and accountable municipalities.

Here, the municipal bureaucracies are critical, because councillors do not deliver basic services. It is the more than 310 000 staff members who do so and they must be competent, capable, ethical and responsive. More than 60% of the municipal staff across the country have only a matric certificate or less, with less than 10% having a degree or more. Significant work remains to be done in building capability and competency levels in municipalities.

Senior management appointments must comply with municipal staffing regulations and we must employ municipal managers who are not corrupt, who are open to having their interviews in public and who are subjected to rigorous lifestyle audits.

Councils must also establish ward committees. Ideally, these should be inclusive, ensuring representation from traditional communities, civil society organisations, key business associations and so on. Inclusivity means going beyond political party representation on ward committees to draw on the organisations that make our communities work.

The ward committees should be given real powers, including a genuine say in planning issues, a role in overseeing municipal contractors working in their ward and the ability to halt contracts where there is no value for money.

Once we have worked through this jungle, we will see the need to ensure that our municipal institutions and those that support them operate cooperatively to continue to deliver basic services to our people more efficiently, effectively, equitably and economically.

• Dr Sutcliffe is co-director of City Insight, a firm that provides information and advice on development issues. He’s a former city manager of eThekwini Metro

• Ms Bannister is co-director of City Insight and a development consultant with experience in urban planning and policy development

•Ms McGahey has more than 20 years’ experience in planning and development, and project management.