Parties battle for Gauteng in local polls
Test of public belief in Ramaphosa’s reform agenda punted as antidote to wasted Zuma years
Gauteng hangs on a knife edge in the 2021 local government elections with all three metros up for grabs. The province’s voters account for more than 23% of the country’s 26-million registered voters, making support in the province’s three metros and local councils critical.
Gauteng hangs on a knife edge in the 2021 local government elections with all three metros up for grabs. The province’s voters account for more than 23% of the country’s 26-million registered voters, making support in the province’s three metros and local councils critical.
The municipal polls in Gauteng on November 1 are a stress test for the three biggest parties, the ANC, DA and EFF, as they seek to lure voters in their bid to control the majority of the municipal councils in the country’s economic hub.
For the ANC in particular the election will be a test of public belief in party president Cyril Ramaphosa’s reform agenda, which has been punted by the party as an antidote to the “wasted years” of former president Jacob Zuma’s nearly decade in office.
The ANC performed dismally in the 2016 local government elections when its support in Gauteng fell to 45.59%, far short of the 58,84% majority garnered in 2011.
At the same time, the DA’s support surged from 33.54% in 2011 to 37.22% in 2016. Having been formed only in 2013, the EFF made significant inroads in Gauteng in 2016 when it garnered 11.45% of the vote, making it the third-largest party in the province, behind the DA.
Leading up to the local government elections, the ANC has concentrated its election campaigning in Gauteng with Ramaphosa leading campaigns in the party’s stronghold of Soweto during the voter registration weekend and in Ekurhuleni over the past weekend.
Ramaphosa will launch the party’s manifesto on Monday in Tshwane, where the DA has been leading a fragile coalition since 2016.
The ANC regained Johannesburg from the DA after former mayor Herman Mashaba resigned in 2019 from the opposition party to form his own party, ActionSA.
The ANC’s manifesto launch in the capital is a strategic move by the governing party as it attempts to claw back the lost council, says independent political analyst Ralph Mathekga.
ANC structures in the city have also been mired in voterigging and manipulation of candidate lists. Councillor candidate Tshepo Motaung was shot dead at the weekend outside his home as factions in the region continued to battle it out.
There are fears the ANC could lose by a bigger margin in this election, with an Ipsos poll released a week ago showing declining support for the ANC (at 49% from 57.5% in 2019) and DA (18% from 21% in 2019) but significant growth for the EFF at 15% (11% in 2019).
The previous elections when the ANC lost significant support paved the way for coalitions.
In August, ANC Ekurhuleni chair and the metro’s executive
mayor, Mzwandile Masina, told Business Day that coalitions are the way to go and could help accelerate service delivery to residents. He said the ANC could enter into a coalition with the EFF as it was not far from the governing party in terms of ideology and policies.
The EFF, however, is not interested in coalitions with other parties including the ANC, its provincial chair, Itani Mukwevho, told Business Day.
Local government elections (voters cast their ballots for a political party and a ward councillor to get seats at a municipal
level) are primarily about resolving local issues faced by voters such as the provision of basic services like refuse collection and conducting street repairs.
However, for the coming polls one of the key considerations facing the Gauteng electorate is which political party has the best policies to fix the economy which has been battered by the pandemic and the riots in July that left thousands of businesses destroyed and damage to infrastructure running into millions of rand.
Gauteng’s metros and towns have underperformed over recent times after years of mismanagement of resources, corruption and state capture left their mark.
Though the pandemic and the restrictions on movement increased the number of service protests — which typically rise in an election year — figures from consultancy firm Municipal IQ show that Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 21% of all service delivery protests in 2021. This indicates mounting disgruntlement over longstanding issues such as unemployment and crumbling municipal services.