South Africans finished voting on Wednesday. By Friday morning, the harder election had begun: who actually gets to run the councils.
That is not a metaphor. It is what the mid-count numbers already say. SABC News reported that by 3am on Friday, 68% of votes had been captured nationally. On that board the ANC sat on 31.72%, the DA on 24.94%, uMkhonto weSizwe on 8.74% and the EFF on 6.11%. KwaZulu-Natal was the key battleground, with MKP leading the provincial race. At least ten councils were headed for hung outcomes on that overnight picture. The Northern Cape was first to complete its count. The DA looked set to retain outright control of the Western Cape.
IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya said results collation was anticipated to be concluded by the weekend. He urged caution with partial results and told the public to rely on official IEC results. That caution matters, because every victory speech this week is still racing ahead of the certified board.
Hung is the new normal
An earlier Thursday night snapshot makes the coalition problem plain. IOL reported that of 100 councils decided by about 11pm, with 63% of the national count in, 69 were hung. The ANC had 21 outright wins, the DA 6 and MKP 3. Another 113 councils still had to be calculated at that point. National shares on that board put the ANC on 31.65%, the DA on 25.25% and MKP on 8.48%. The piece framed it as the ANC’s worst showing path since 1994. Whatever the final certified percentages, the shape is already clear: many rooms, few outright majorities.
The metros tell the same story in sharper detail. At mid-count on Thursday, IOL had Tshwane at DA 34.86%, ActionSA 22.16% and ANC 20.18% with 55% counted. Ekurhuleni sat at DA 31.66%, ANC 21.3% and ActionSA 17.94%. In the Northern Cape, 17 of 26 councils were hung with 99% counted. Analyst Dr Levy Ndou told IOL that the abundance of parties splits the vote, and that the real test is whether they can work together without freezing services.
A Friday morning Townpress councils tracker, updated around 07:20 and claiming full voting-district capture for the metros it lists, had Cape Town DA on 61.2%, Johannesburg DA 40.9%, Tshwane DA 32.8%, Ekurhuleni DA 29.6%, eThekwini MKP 43.7%, Nelson Mandela Bay DA 44.4%, Mangaung DA 36.9% and Buffalo City ANC 42.0% (Townpress councils page). Treat those as tracker figures. SABC was still describing the national count as mid-process overnight. The IEC declaration is what counts.
Cape Town is the exception that proves the rule
Daily Maverick reported that Geordin Hill-Lewis declared a Cape Town win and called it the only metro expected to deliver an outright majority, projecting about 58% from the party’s own data. He said he intends to stay Cape Town mayor until at least 2029. Ashor Sarupen claimed projections showed the DA winning more black votes than the EFF, and pointed to a claim of more than one million black voters.
Even in the Western Cape, Cape Town is not the whole map. Daily Maverick had the DA keeping Stellenbosch and Paarl/Drakenstein, taking Hessequa and Bergrivier outright, and leading without a majority in 14 other councils. Saldanha Bay was around 49.2% with 15 seats. Beaufort West had the DA around 30%. ActionSA led Laingsburg, ICOSA Kannaland, and the Patriotic Alliance led Prince Albert. A provincial win and a province of hung towns are two different stories.
Daily Maverick also floated the obvious national question: possible DA, ActionSA and FF Plus coalitions for Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni if old fights can be parked. That is the auction. It will not be decided by a Thursday night celebration outside a results centre.
What voters should demand next
Councils do not run on hashtags. They run on who holds the mayoral chain, who chairs finance, who signs off on tenders, and whether the parties in the room will keep the lights, water and refuse moving while they argue.
So the public test for the next two weeks is simple:
- Will parties publish who they will and will not govern with before the mayoral votes?
- Will coalition agreements name the posts and the red lines on appointments and procurement?
- Will voters get more than a press conference smile when a deal that decides their rates bill is struck in private?
IOL’s “political auction” label is blunt, and useful. Auctions are fine when the buyers know the price. The risk after Wednesday is not that South Africa has many parties. The risk is that residents only discover the price after the taps run dry.
Partial results will keep moving until the IEC closes the board. Moepya has already said the public should wait for the official result. Parties can project. They can celebrate. They can phone each other. What they cannot do is pretend the municipal election ended when the last ballot was scanned. For most cities, that was only the opening bid.