ANC faces local poll backlash

The embattled ANC is expected to face stiff competition in its bid to regain an absolute majority in several councils in the upcoming local government elections However, experts say the polls will be shaped less by national trends and more by regional dynamics, including candidate popularity, community dissatisfaction and bread-and-butter issues. This comes against the backdrop of the ANC’s decline to just over 40% in the 2024 national elections. Analysts told the Mail & Guardian that while the national results offered useful insight into voter sentiment, they were not definitive predictors of local election outcomes. They said protest voting would probably be more pronounced at local level, driven by persistent service delivery failures such as collapsing infrastructure, water shortages, high electricity tariffs, sanitation backlogs, poorly maintained roads, high unemployment, crime and transport challenges. Local government expert Dr Harlan Cloete said local elections differed significantly from national polls in their voting patterns, adding that the ANC would probably shed further support “specifically now that the SACP [South African Communist Party] has decided to go out on its own”. “The EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters] will want to do a strong showing. The [uMkhonto weSizwe] MK Party will want to show that its huge win in the past national elections was not a fluke. “You are seeing a rise of smaller issue-based community parties, which do not want to be controlled by Luthuli House [in Johannesburg] or from Wale Street [in Cape Town].” The Democratic Alliance (DA), he said, would in all probability try to convince voters to vote for it. “It is going to be a really difficult election because parties like the DA are part of the government of national unity (GNU). “How does it define itself outside the GNU in the local election?” Cloete asked. He likened the upcoming polls to US midterm elections, noting that South Africa was heading towards national elections in