South Africa’s Electoral Court, on 16 September, ruled against the African National Congress (ANC) (the country’s largest party) bid to force the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to add 181 candidates to the Local Government Elections (LGE) lists. This ruling is a major setback to the ANC and underscores both the party’s ongoing political decline and the highly competitive nature of the LGE, which is set to take place on 4 November. The ANC has pledged to appeal this ruling but is unlikely to succeed.

The ANC brought this case after it failed to submit its full candidate lists by the IEC’s deadline of 17:00 (SAST) on 28 August. This ruling is a severe blow to the ANC in the six affected municipalities, namely Ingquza Hill, Port St Johns, Walter Sisulu and Sundays River Valley municipalities in the Eastern Cape, uMshwati in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Mangaung in the Free State. The latter is one of South Africa’s eight metro municipalities and includes the city of Bloemfontein.

As a consequence of this, the ANC will be unable to contest the Proportional Representation (PR) ballot in all six municipalities and will be fully excluded from the Ingquza Hill and Port St Johns elections where it failed to submit both the PR and ward councillor lists. The ANC had previously enjoyed over 70% voter support in these two municipalities and had been assured of another easy victory. In the remaining four municipalities, the ANC is now guaranteed to lose its majorities, as it will now only contest the ward elections, limiting it to a maximum of 50% of seats in the respective councils.

Significantly, this will guarantee that the ANC loses control of Mangaung, which was already set to be one of the most fiercely contested elections. The ANC only won the metro with 50.63% of the vote in the 2021 LGE, securing 51 of the city’s 101 seats. Now the party’s best hope is that it retains its 40 ward seats; a highly unlikely prospect given that the latest polls indicate that the party’s support has fallen to 32%.

In fact, this poll, which was conducted by the global market research firm Ipsos, indicates that the ANC does not have support above 40% in any of the eight metros, including the party’s stronghold of Buffalo City (KuGompo). In fact, the Ipsos poll results suggest that the only metro that is on track for a majority in the election on 4 November is eThekwini, where the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party is expected to win an outright majority. Even the Democratic Alliance (DA), the country’s second largest party, is at risk of losing its majority in its Cape Town stronghold.

The fact that the LGE is turning into South Africa’s most competitive election to date is unsurprising given the watershed 2024 general election, which saw the ANC’s national support fall below 40% and ushered in the Government of National Unity (GNU). As such, the fact that the ANC was so disorganised that it failed to meet the IEC’s candidate submission deadline is remarkable. Compounding this, dozens of the parties touted mayoral candidates, including for the country’s commercial hub of Johannesburg. This means that the party has not yet identified all of its municipal election standard bearers with less than even six weeks before the elections.

The ANC’s disastrous failure to authenticate and submit all of its candidate lists by the IEC’s deadline indicates that the party is not prepared for this election and will not be able to replicate its traditional late campaign surge to boost its support ahead of elections. The party is riven by factional infighting and poor internal administration. As such, it is on track for its worst election to date.

This opens up opportunities for other parties, and the upcoming LGEs will present the clearest picture of South Africa’s political landscape in the post-ANC dominance era. This will include the continued growth of parties that are rooted in ethnic identity and geographical location, the ANC’s recession to becoming a predominantly rural party, the consolidation of the MK in KZN, and potentially most significantly, the shifting voting patterns of South Africa’s urban black voters. South Africa is a majority-black and urbanised country. As such, whichever party can gain momentum with this critical support base will be on track to potentially displace the ANC as South Africa’s largest party in the 2029 general election.

In the short-term, the tightly fought LGE will result in hung municipal councils necessitating the formation of coalition governments. Outside of eThekwini and Cape Town, these coalitions will not have a single dominant party and will need to comprise a number of political parties, furthering the political instability that has marked South Africa’s municipal governance over the past ten years. The only viable solution to this would be a grand coalition between the ANC and the DA to produce two-party stable coalitions across the main metros. However, this is unlikely given the enmity between the two parties, and deep resistance to any such coalition with the DA from the ANC’s regional structures, despite the relative success of the GNU, which includes both of these parties.