Why South Africa's Local Elections Matter: Water, Frustration and a Fracturing ANC

Two days before South Africans vote in municipal elections, Vatiswa Zoya had already decided to stay home. "We've decided not to vote. At all," she said. "What is the point? We will still sleep hungry." She lives in Tembisa, a township in Ekurhuleni, a municipality on the edge of Johannesburg, the country's largest city.

A neighbor in the same township, 22-year-old Lindokuhle Mbandazayo, plans to vote, and for much the same reasons. She told DW the electricity goes off regularly, and that sewage runs in the streets so residents have to jump over it. She has not decided which party to back, but she is casting her ballot in only her second election and says she wants a new voice. Her reasoning is that people have voted for the current governing party for a long time and have not been served well. Analyst Sanusha Naidu of the Institute for Global Dialogue calls this shared sense of grievance an "embedded frustration," one that drives people to vote even though change will not come overnight.

Water is at the center of it. In Johannesburg, several neighborhoods have lived with cuts and rationing for weeks as old infrastructure fails to keep pace with supply. Ferrial Adam, executive director of the water rights group WaterCAN, spoke to DW at a protest over the cuts. She said half of South Africa's drinking water systems are not fit for drinking, and that almost 70% of wastewater treatment works are in a critical state, spewing sewage into rivers and streams. In Tshwane, which includes the administrative capital Pretoria, a recent water treatment failure left more than 400 residents sick. Naidu says candidates' promises on water have been transactional: taps will flow, old infrastructure will be dealt with. But she doesn't think they have studied what the budgets actually say about water access.

The vote also tests the African National Congress, the leading party in the national coalition government. It took 53.91% of the vote in 2016 and an outright majority in 161 of 213 councils. By 2021 that fell to 45.59%, with a majority in 122 of 213. Ipsos has projected support could drop as low as 30%, which would mean more municipalities run by coalitions. Naidu says the party has struggled to meet the expectations of Millennial and Gen Z voters, who now make up most of the electorate and want to know who is being put forward to make things work.

Migration has become a major talking point after several months of protests, which intensified in October with opposition to the asylum process. Murmur Intelligence, a digital analysis firm, says Action SA, the MK Party and the Patriotic Alliance have all used immigration as a campaign issue. Its co-founder, Aldu Cornelissen, thinks Action SA stands to gain most, though he would wager only 6% to 8% of the vote. In a fragmented field, even that matters. The Independent Electoral Commission reports 136,760 candidates nationwide, with 75 parties contesting in Johannesburg, 70 in Tshwane and 69 in eThekwini, which covers Durban and its surroundings.

Disinformation is also part of the campaign. The IEC is investigating more than 700 complaints of false or AI-generated content. One prominent claim is that the ANC plans to mobilize asylum seekers to vote for it, yet asylum seekers, refugees and permanent residents cannot legally vote in South African elections, however long they have been in the country. William Bird of the media monitoring agency Moxii Africa says such content is now standard in any election buildup, attaches itself to hot-button issues, and often includes claims of rigging. In South Africa's case, he says, there is no evidence for that, and he calls the IEC one of the best electoral management bodies in the world. He also says social media platforms encourage people to attack one another.

Turnout may decide the outcome. Municipal turnout has historically trailed national turnout: 57.95% in 2016, falling to 45.87% in the following municipal election, against 58.64% in the 2024 national vote. Each voter marks two ballots, one for a local representative and one for a party under proportional representation. The proportional seats make up half of all council seats, so low turnout directly affects how many seats parties win. Naidu says that is why parties keep urging people to vote. The result will shape each municipality's makeup and whether new coalition governments form.