On the eve of the vote, Norsira co-founder Sean McLaughlin told BizNews his firm had run every metro and local council through its scenario model, and found fewer than a quarter of them safe. He walked through how Durban could end up with a DA mayor backed by the ANC and IFP, why Joburg's DA surge might still land in opposition, and where MK could carve deep into the ANC's base in southern Mpumalanga. He also flagged the quieter contests, from Makhanda's collapse to Beaufort West's lesson for Gayton McKenzie, and the IFP's run of by-election wins that made it his dark horse..Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.336)Just how big will the African National Congress losses be tomorrow? Here to share some possible scenarios with viewers is Sean McLaughlin, the co-founder of Norsira. Welcome, Sean.Sean McLaughlin (00:16.29)Thank you very much for having me.Chris Steyn (00:18.552)Firstly, how did you come to these probable scenarios? Not predictions, let's stress that, just scenarios.Sean McLaughlin (00:26.808)Yes, that's right. These are not predictions, you're correct to point that out. So we have a very robust methodology that we've come to. And for the most part the methodology is tracking the linear trend of these political parties over time. So for example, obviously where you're sitting now in Overstrand, it's one of the safest DA municipalities in the country. So you effectively track the political support within that municipality over time. So that's the main pillar. Other pillars include the rise of new political parties, maybe local parties within those municipalities. Another one is service delivery. How good is service delivery that may be rewarded by the political incumbent? And vice versa, very poor service delivery. Maybe the incumbent may get punished. And then of course you also take into consideration things like by-elections and you put all that together and among other things and and and you'll come to a pretty close enough picture of what you think the outcome will be within a day or so from now.Chris Steyn (01:50.67)Okay, how many councils did you assess?Sean McLaughlin (01:54.04)We've assessed every municipality in the country that's local and metropolitan. So metropolitan big cities, as you know. So that's Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, eThekwini, Durban, and so on. And further to that there are two hundred and thirteen local municipalities. So that's everything from second tier cities such as Maritzburg..all the way down to sort of small villages and large towns.Chris Steyn (02:39.383)Okay, according to your assessment, how many of those could change hands tomorrow?Sean McLaughlin (02:46.603)Yeah, okay. So according to our methodology, we think around forty five councils are safe, very safe of the two hundred and thirteen. Yeah, so so less than a quarter. So there are, you know, only three parties and now four with the rise of uMkhonto we Sizwe which can get outright majorities in councils. So those are the DA, the IFP in KwaZulu-Natal, and of course the African National Congress. And their stronghold, of course, is sort of Limpopo, North West and the eastern sort of part of the Eastern Cape. And then with the rise of uMkhonto we Sizwe. Now remember uMkhonto we Sizwe was formed in late twenty twenty three and contested in national and provincial election twenty twenty four but has not yet contested a full nationwide local government election. So it really remains to be seen how they will perform across the country. Now it is very unclear; the by-election data is absolutely all over the place. We have some reason to believe that they may not perform as well as they did in twenty twenty four because a local government election is much, much more complicated: you have to fill the ward candidates, it's more about logistics and so on. And those things have come as an enormous challenge to uMkhonto we Sizwe. And we think that they may be down on average twenty percentage points in parts of rural KwaZulu-Natal, down on average perhaps ten percentage points in metros, down possibly as much as twenty percentage points in Mpumalanga, in the sort of southern part of Mpumalanga, the sort of Zulu speaking part of Mpumalanga. But again it is very, very difficult to say how MK are going to fare in this election.Chris Steyn (04:59.15)Please take us through the eight metros.Sean McLaughlin (05:03.179)Yes, okay. So the City of Cape Town: we assess the city of Cape Town to be safe DA majority. There were about eight or nine or so by-elections and the DA has held the majority of those and in the seats that it was standing to hold. And the linear trend line suggests that the DA is on track to hold the city as well. If the DA does slip below the fifty-one percentage point mark, it probably will likely get the support of a sort of smaller like minded parties such as the Freedom Front plus or the ACDP to get to the fifty one percent mark which is necessary requirement to pass most things in councils within South Africa, majoritarianism, and…Yeah, it's it's unlikely to see the DA fall into the in into the low forties, if it is to fall fall below fifty percent at all. Buffalo City, so KuGompo, it's formerly East London. The ANC looks set to hold a majority there. It may be quite tight, but we think it'll probably hold. Very interesting one is Ekhuruleni, so the East Rand, Germston, Benoni, Springs, Alberton, places like that. Now the ANC has fallen pretty far here, and there is a sizable Zulu population here. So it's quite likely the ANC will continue to fall pretty far. And one interesting scenario here is the possible rise of a government of local unity somewhere like this. Now that's to say that the ANC and the DA work together in a council. Now there's not a great deal of precedence for this in South Africa. However, earlier this year in the city of Ekhuruleni, the ANC and the DA passed a budget together… The ANC has fallen pretty far in the council and has for a large period of the time, since twenty twenty one, relied on the Economic Freedom Fighters, the EFF, what people would see as their natural sort of ideological ally.Sean McLaughlin (07:31.842)However, earlier this year the ANC passed a budget with the DA and there are some other signs that they may work together in this metro. It's not a given and it's a very hard thing to assess because it really will boil down to councillors on the ground and the caucus lead and and so on. But it's it and it it may not be immediately clear even in the weeks after the election; they may form minority governments and then see who they pass budgets with, and see who will elect the mayor and so on. So that is a very interesting prospect. And as I say, there isn't a great deal of precedent for GLUs, governments of local unity. One municipality in the Western Cape called Kannaland, which I believe is Calitzdorp, so just outside of Oudtshoorn, formed a GLU of sorts a number of years ago. But apart from that, and the East Rand, there is not a great deal of precedent for this, which has been talked about much in South African political discourse in the last number of months. So moving on to Johannesburg, of course, the story of this whole political campaign, no matter what you think of Helen Zille or the Democratic Alliance, it has been the most remarkable political campaign possibly in South African political history since ninety four. And there is an outside chance that if the ANC has a very bad day and the DA has a very good day, that the DA could pull this one out of the bag and get higher forties. Possibly even that fifty one percent mark. You know, strange things happen. And people are prepared to vote for compelling alternatives when they come along, and people may see Helen Zille as that compelling alternative. So that remains a possibility. It's just that we don't have it as our base case. Our base case is that the DA reaches a sort of 40% mark. So it does very well, but doesn't get enough to get that coherent coalition that it sees as feasible to run a sort of centre-right style, George style, Richards Bay style coalition with its like-minded partners in the Freedom Front and the ACDP and maybe the IFP.Sean McLaughlin (09:56.062)So the DA may well get forty percent then go into opposition. And yeah, that's kind of our base case for there. Bloemfontein/Mangaung has been where the ANC has had a majority until now. We have this council as “in play”. We think the ANC is gonna fall pretty far here. There's been service delivery challenges in Mangaung and there has been at times a lot of internal conflict within the ANC caucus in Mangaung and Bloomfontein. There's a whole series of by-elections early in the post twenty one cycle due to internal sort of rushes within the parties. So you could see the ANC fall pretty far here to forty percent or so. Possibility of a GLU, not out of the question. But again the FF does very well in Bloemfontein, so it may just end up being sort of an ANC led broad coalition.Sean McLaughlin (10:53.153)Nelson Mandela Bay, Gqeberha, formerly Port Elizabeth, we talked about before the show. Our base case there is sort of more of the same of what we currently see in Nelson Mandela Bay, a sort of an ANC led broad coalition where maybe the DA does well but it's not able to do well enough to to put together something coherent. The DA has had attempts at governing Nelson Mandela Bay and they'll say they didn't have a majority, they'll say it was unwieldy coalitions and that all may be very well, but people still have in in recent memory DA led coalitions, so that's something to consider. Then the city of Tshwane, Pretoria. There is a strong possibility that the DA and the Freedom Front come together and finally get over the fifty one percent mark here, which they've stared at for the best part of a decade now, and very, very nearly got there, very very near yet so far. That's what they'll be hoping for. And lastly, Durban/eThekwini. This I think is a particularly interesting one, and if you permit me a little bit of time to elucidate what I think may happen here it's quite clear that MK, former president of Jacob Zuma's party, is going to do very well within this metro. And now some polls have them in the high thirties, low forties, some have maybe fifty one percent. It is possible that MK gets outright control of Durban/eThekwini. However, there is also a possibility that, as I was explaining, MK doesn't do quite as well and might not do as well in the local context. So that DA, ANC and IFP, and perhaps one or two other smaller ones, may be able to collectively deny MK Durban, which would be quite something to see. Now the precedent we have for this, which I'm sure you're aware of, is the government of provincial unity in KwaZulu-Natal province, formed…Sean McLaughlin (13:03.871)…in the aftermath of the twenty twenty four election. And one reason why this is perhaps more likely to happen here: one reason is it's following the GPU precedent. The second reason is that the ANC councillors in eThekwini are likely to be PR proportional representation councillors, which means they are probably more likely to follow the line from the provincial structures of the party and or the national structures of the party. So they won't be directly elected ward councillors. I don't think the ANC will get any or maybe a handful of ward councillors. So that is one reason that Durban in a number of days' time may have a DA mayor and that would be that would be quite something to be backed by the Inkatha Freedom Party and by the ANC. So there's the metros. Hopefully that was concise enough.Chris Steyn (14:03.906)Quite. What about some other economically important towns?Sean McLaughlin (14:11.731)Yeah, okay. So some places which I don't think have received a lot of attention in this election in the coverage of this election are somewhere like Richards Bay. So the Umhlathuse municipality in the northeast of KwaZulu Natal. A very economically significant place, a coal export terminal if I'm not mistaken. There's other economic activity within that municipality and close to certain tourist hotspots and so on. So this has been an IFP led council since after the 2021 local government election. And we're careful not to assign political control exactly to service delivery, but the IFP at least and the IFP led coalition has overseen improvements in service delivery within Umhlathuse. And it looks as though the IFP are going to be rewarded there. And this also goes against the narrative that the IFP is a rural party governing somewhere like Richards Bay. They've done extraordinarily well in by elections there, extraordinarily well in by elections across the board. IFP is going to be the dark horse of this election, I believe. I think they've flipped something like twenty four seats in by-elections since 2021. So this is a very interesting story. Their usual bed fellow coalition partner being the DA had about 9 or 10% and ACDP Freedom Front. And in the early days of this coalition they relied, I believe, on the EFF, a number of EFF councillors to get them over the line to that magic 51% number. As I said, those by elections they flipped, so they've consolidated their hold on Richards Bay, on Umhlathuse, and the twenty twenty four data is very, very interesting because despite MK being on the ballot, the IFP still grew in this municipality, which suggests to a very great extent that MK is cannibalising almost exclusively the ANC….Sean McLaughlin (16:33.963)…in this part of the world and in that sort of north east KwaZulu-Natal IFP sort of stronghold. And I think Richards Bay is a good example of, you know, if centre, centre-Right parties in South Africa, in any sphere of government, whether that's KZN and provincial government, whether it's in George, whether it's in Richards Bay, get fifty one, have collectively have fifty one percent and they're not relying on very, very small parties and and lots of them, lots of very, very small parties to get that magic fifty-one percent, that they tend to be very stable and they tend to at the very least oversee improvements in service delivery and and and so on. So you know, it's not to say MK might not take an upset of the Richards Bay story, the Umhlathuse story, but if they were to do so, it would be against the trend. So that's Richards Bay. And then yeah, other places which I don't believe have got a great deal of attention if you’ll permit me to move to sort of southern Mpumalanga. So MK of course has a largely Zulu speaking following and support base. Now something which kind of astounded me in the data was how far this goes into the southern part of Mpumalanga. So there's quite a lot of councils in the southern part of Mpumalanga which will get a very large degree of MK support, which would cannibalise the ANC on the left flank, which will - as current trends stand - bring the ANC down, not only below majority status, but perhaps to a forty, thirty, twenty, ten percent party in some of these councils. And…Sean McLaughlin (18:42.933)…the possibility is very real of a government of local unity in some very far flung parts of Mpumalanga. Now, what I don't know is what decision these councillors on the ground will take and what the direction will be from the provincial structures. That's very difficult to know. But at the very least mathematically it is likely to work in a lot of these places. That's to say where the ANC and the DA collectively, maybe with one or two others, get fifty one percent. Now the ANC may turn to the FF and and to MK itself or others, but you know it would be very interesting politically and socially if this does happen in some of these towns…Sean McLaughlin (20:04.299)Lots of industry, lots of heavy industry, a lot of very large populations in a lot of these councils. I'll be very interested to see how these play out and at Norsira, we'll be tracking these on an ongoing basis.Chris Steyn (20:22.766)Okay, well not every African National Congress Council is in trouble, Sean. Highlight some of those success stories or relatively successful councils for us.Sean McLaughlin (20:36.181)Absolutely, and you've had great analysts on your show which have elucidated this before, the sort of ANC is becoming Northern Limpopo Party, North West, parts of the North West and parts of the eastern part of the Eastern Cape. Now if you permit me one moment, some of these councils have pretty good service delivery scores from our proprietary metric. So the ANC looks pretty solid in a lot of these places.Places like Senqu, just to the south of Lesotho, so Lady Grey. Places like Emahlahleni, not to be confused with Emahlahlenii in Mpumalanga, so Lady Frere. Places like…Great Kei, Komga. Those places have some good, some relatively okay service delivery scores and are ANC strongholds and we expect the ANC to retain outright majorities in those councils among others, pretty comfortably, all other things being equal. So much can happen in this election. Chris, I'm sure you're aware, I'm sure you've thought about this yourself, but what if polling stations are severely under-resourced across the entire country? What if there's logistical challenges? The IEC has been very heavily under-resourced in the last number of years. I think that's quite well known. And there's logistical challenges in twenty twenty four, very long queues.I don't think the next number of days is going to be all plain sailing and this may be that any logistical challenges may lead to strange localised outcomes.Chris Steyn (22:51.502)And there is always vote buying.Sean McLaughlin (22:55.915)Well, there may be. At Norsira we're completely independent. So we're tracking service delivery and councils, we're tracking investment nodes, we're tracking the intersection of these things with political parties and tracking political party support on how these things correlate and that's our focus for now.Chris Steyn (23:23.512)Are there any other highlights from your assessment that you would like to share with the viewers?Sean McLaughlin (23:27.799)There are some things which I think have not got a great deal of attention in the lead up to this election. So somewhat like Makhanda, so formerly Grahamstown, a cultural hub in South Africa, educational hub, Rhodes University and so on. Now there are enormous service delivery challenges in Makhanda. It is ranked one of the bottom in our proprietary service delivery metric. We have Makhanda as collapsed and it is very possible that ANC support, as it is an ANC governed council, collapses with that as well. And the ANC could fall as far as forty percent… Yeah, that one we call “in play”. So hard to know what way the local ANC councillors will lean, but it would be again quite something if you saw a sort of government of local unity, ANC DA in somewhere like Makhanda/Grahamstown. Now other places like Rustenberg are “in play”. A MK won quite an interesting by-election there. DA has kind of normal levels of support there in sort of twenty twenty, thirty percent range. And the ACE has fallen precipitously in this council. So that's one I would definitely keep an eye on. And one which I think is very interesting is Beaufort West, of course a very well known town and in the heart of the Karoo. Now, what has happened in Beaufort West has interested me quite a lot in the data that I have that I have dived into in the last number of months. So in the aftermath of twenty twenty one the PA was part of a coalition in Beaufort West. And Gayton McKenzie said he would fix…Sean McLaughlin (25:54.2)…the swimming pool in Beaufort West. He said he would turn Beaufort West into the Dubai. Now those things didn't come to pass. I think Gayton McKenzie's stance on a lot of things will resonate with a lot of South African voters and I think he's very astute and savvy in many ways. But the PA don't have enough support to have an outright majority in most of the councils where they do well. So this rural Western Cape, eastern western part of the Eastern Cape and in the Northern Cape and Beaufort West here is a perfect example of that. So you'll remember there was a series of by-elections in June twenty twenty four and remarkably the DA flipped all of those and I believe one of them was off the ANC, one of them was off the PA. And the DA remarkably gained a majority in that council, which had eluded them for many, many years, if ever, I think. And I wonder is this Beaufort West story something to look at in much more detail for Gayton McKenzie? What happened in Belfort West? If you don't deliver, you'll get punished at the ballot box. Is that what we are seeing here in Beaufort West? I'm not saying that is exactly the reason. You need to do a full scientific survey and go to Beaufort West and study people and get qualitative data on that whole thing. But on the face of it, it looks like there is something happening there in Beaufort West. So will the DA keep that outright majority that they have in Beaufort West? We have it that they may well do, but it's very, very close there. So those are some places which haven't received a huge amount of attention.Chris Steyn (27:52.419)Fascinating. Sean, before the show started, you shared a very interesting statistic with me with regards to Overstrand where BizNews has its HQ, as you know.Sean McLaughlin (28:05.953)Yes, indeed. So the Overstrand municipality on the way out of Cape Town, of course, heading east. It begins in a small town called Rooiels, more or less, and includes Pringle Bay, Betty’s Bay… Hermanus obviously, and Stanford, among other places. Now this council has the highest proportional population growth in the entire country. So that's since 1996. So over a long time frame. So that's remarkable for a municipality whose growth is restrained by mountains and the sea. So it must be well, it is a very beautiful place. I have been there myself and spent a lot of time there, and I can testify that its natural beauty is absolutely outstanding. And that may well be one reason. I wonder if BizNews and the BizNews tribe following is another reason which has drawn a lot of people to set up full time in Hermanus. I'm not sure exactly the reasons, but I suspect that those reasons are among the reasons for that. So in nineteen ninety-six, according to the StatsSA, Overstrand had a population of thirty six thousand two hundred people and in twenty twenty two it had a population of one hundred and thirty two thousand. Yeah, so that's…Sean McLaughlin (29:53.816)…compound annual growth of about four percent over thirty years. That's what that looks like. So yeah, that's a very interesting one that I've pulled out of the data, yeah.Chris Steyn (30:08.654)Thank you very much. Would you like to sum up?Sean McLaughlin (30:12.651)Yeah, look, I think that South Africa is an outlier in how much its councils matter. And they're responsible for four main pillars of service delivery. So water distribution, waste and refuse removal, electricity distribution and municipal road maintenance. So municipalities within South Africa have a lot of responsibility. I wouldn't use the word power or authority. I think the more power they get, the better that will be for South Africa over time if more power is gradually handed down to municipalities that they can take on their own police forces and among other things. If these competencies, if these responsibilities are carried out well by a municipality, that attracts inward investment and it becomes a very positive feedback loop in terms of that you then get a better revenue base for the council and so on. And that sort of trend continues and deepens and to the extent that some of these municipalities - and Overstrand very much probably is one of these - that it's service delivery is very, very good: among some of the highest water quality by the way in the country - the feedback loop deepens and it becomes its own investment hub, its own sort of sub-investment destination within a sub-investment destination. And then of course the contrary to that, the vice versa of that is also true. So municipalities which cannot perform these functions well some have effectively collapsed and have lost the ability to do things as basic as produce an invoice and…Sean McLaughlin (32:17.271)….effectively parallel structures have taken over some of some of these councils. So it's a long way of saying that councils matter in South Africa and we, at Norsira, we're completely independent. There are councils…there are good DA run councils, there are good IFP run councils, there there are good ANC run councils and we very much hope voters will take this into consideration when they go to the poll in a number of hours time.Chris Steyn (32:52.248)Thank you very much for sharing the results of a mammoth assessment with us one day before South Africans vote in the local government elections. That was Norsira co-founder Sean McLachlan speaking to BizNews and I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.