WSM: ANC’s coalition maths: a partner it can’t stomach, or allies who’ll cost it more

The local government elections are seven days away, and the ANC’s numbers keep sliding. It had 62% when Ramaphosa took over. It had 40% in 2024. One poll now puts it at 32%, only six points ahead of the DA, and it leads in none of the six big metros. In this week’s Jaundiced Eye column, William Saunderson-Meyer works through the coalition arithmetic metro by metro. The tidy answer is an ANC–DA tie-up. Voters like it. The numbers work. So what’s stopping it? Ideology, old loyalties to MK and the EFF, and a nagging fear that the DA has done better out of the GNU. For the ANC, every exit looks like a trapdoor..Jaundiced Eye by William Saunderson-Meyer.With the local government elections (LGEs) just a week away, the ANC is reeling from a flurry of punishing polling figures.The LGEs could deliver another heavy blow to a party in relentless electoral decline under President Cyril Ramaphosa. When he succeeded Jacob Zuma in 2018, he inherited — along with a poisoned chalice — a commanding ANC parliamentary majority of 62%, secured in the 2014 general election. Under Ramaphosa, that slipped to 58% in 2019, followed by 46% in the 2021 LGEs. Then came the 2024 general election, when the ANC slumped to just 40% and lost its parliamentary majority for the first time.Now, just two years later, the Social Research Foundation/Common Sense (SRF/CS) survey, conducted between September and October, with a 2% margin of error, puts the ANC at just 32%, against the DA's 26%. In just over two years, the ANC's 18-percentage-point lead over the DA in the 2024 general election has seemingly narrowed to just six points. That’s a stunning reversal, even given the important caveat that LGEs are different from national elections, both in electoral turnout and in the issues that motivate voters.The DA, however, claims an even narrower gap. On Sunday it said its internal polling put it at 28.4%, just 1.2 percentage points behind the ANC’s 29.6% — effectively a dead heat. While the announcement may partly be an attempt to galvanise its supporters, the party has a longstanding reputation for accurate internal polling, although the methodology behind these latest figures is not known.Since turnout in LGEs is historically about ten percentage points lower than in national elections, mobilising supporters is especially important. In closely contested wards, a handful of votes can determine who wins. And on the separate party ballot, every vote helps determine each party’s eventual share of council seats.For the DA, the stakes are particularly high. With the polls suggesting that outright majorities are beyond its reach in the major metros outside Cape Town, finishing ahead of its rivals is only half the battle. The larger its share of council seats, the greater its bargaining power and the fewer coalition partners it may need to secure a governing majority.The eNCA/MarkData (eNCA/MD) poll, conducted in August/September with a 3% error margin, has further evidence of the ANC’s predicament. Covering the country’s six largest metros, it suggests that the ANC’s decline is particularly pronounced in the urban centres that drive South Africa’s economy.In 2021, the ANC was still the largest party in four of these six metros — Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Tshwane and eThekwini — although it failed to secure an outright majority in any of them. It came second to the DA in the remaining two, Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay. The more recent SRF/CS poll corroborates the eNCA/MD findings in all three metros it also surveyed — Johannesburg, Tshwane and eThekwini. Now, across all six, the ANC leads in none.Although only some of the ANC's lost support appears to have gone to the DA, the shift has nevertheless changed the arithmetic of coalition. Now the stark choices confronting the ANC and DA — the GNU’s two lead actors, surrounded by a motley cast of bit players — come sharply into focus.On the face of it, the numbers favour extending their national partnership into local government. In four of the five metros surveyed outside Cape Town, their combined support exceeds 50%. Such an arrangement offers a simpler route to governing majorities than the unwieldy alliances with smaller parties that have characterised municipal politics since the 2021 LGEs.There is even public support for such an arrangement. The SRF/CS poll finds that 68% of voters favour ANC–DA coalitions in municipalities where neither party has a majority but the two together can form one. That includes 83% of ANC supporters and 77% of DA supporters.But the arithmetic cuts both ways. The ANC's diminished strength increases the DA's potential bargaining power. It also strengthens the hand of MK and the EFF should the ANC seek to govern without the DA. Much would depend on MK’s and the EFF’s willingness to cooperate and the price they demand. Both parties have reason to reflect on their strategic miscalculation in June 2024, when their initial refusal to join the GNU strengthened the DA's hand. By the time they realised they had overplayed it and made a belated bid to replace the DA in a coalition with the ANC, the deal had already been struck.The obvious precedent is Gauteng, where after the 2024 election the national GNU partnership was supposed to provide the basis for a provincial arrangement. Instead, Premier Panyaza Lesufi defied the wishes of the ANC national leadership to form a minority administration that excluded the DA, and has since handed the EFF the keys to the provincial Treasury. This week, Lesufi reiterated his preference for governing without an ‘anti-transformation’ DA that keeps challenging key ANC policies in the Constitutional Court.In Johannesburg, eNCA/MD and SRF/CS both put the DA at around 35% and the ANC at 22% — together a comfortable majority of some 57%. An ANC–MK–EFF combination, by contrast, musters only about 46%, requiring additional smaller parties to cross the majority threshold. The DA faces much the same difficulty without the ANC, particularly since Helen Zille has ruled out alliances with MK and the EFF. Even if it could enlist ActionSA (10%), the PA (4%) and the FF+ (1%), it would still fall just short of 50%, leaving it dependent on yet another smaller party.The picture is similar in Tshwane, where the two pollsters put the ANC at around 25% and the DA at 33%. Together, the two would command a comfortable majority of almost 60%. An ANC alliance with MK and the EFF, however, would muster only 42%, although bringing in ActionSA (11%) would take it above 50%. The DA faces its own difficulties. Even with the FF+ (8%), it would reach only 42%, leaving it dependent on ActionSA, or a collection of smaller parties. But relations with ActionSA remain deeply strained following its defection to the ANC–EFF camp in 2024, which brought down DA mayor Cilliers Brink.Ekurhuleni is more finely balanced. eNCA/MD puts the DA at 31% against the ANC's 29%, a difference well within the poll's margin of error. Together, however, they account for some 60% of support. An ANC alliance with MK and the EFF might just scrape past 50%. The DA, even with ActionSA, the FF+, the IFP, the PA, and the ACDP, would muster only 49%.In Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA's 38% and the ANC's 37% are statistically indistinguishable. Yet their combined support exceeds 75%. Separately, however, both face difficult coalition negotiations. The ANC, together with MK and the EFF, would reach only 49%, but could cross the halfway mark by adding the PA (4%). The DA, even with ActionSA, the PA and the FF+, would reach only 47%, leaving it dependent on yet more smaller parties to govern without the ANC.Of course, these polling figures are snapshots of a roiling, ever-changing process, not election forecasts. Nevertheless, they illustrate why an extension of the GNU partnership presents the arithmetically tidiest response to the fragmentation of metropolitan politics.However, when one gets to KwaZulu-Natal, the historical tensions and personal antipathies between the players highlight why tidy solutions are so rare in politics. At provincial level, the ANC and DA are already governing partners with the IFP in a precarious coalition originally supported by the NFP, whose leadership has since withdrawn its backing. The arrangement is just a whisker from collapse.In eThekwini, the polls put MK at 43-48%, the DA second at 25-28% and the ANC at a derisory 13-15%. Together, the ANC and DA would fall well short of a majority, even with the IFP's support. MK, by contrast, would comfortably clear 50% with the ANC, or with the IFP on eNCA/MD's figures..Read more:.Black South Africans narrow wealth gap in top income brackets.Coalition arithmetic, governance stability, and public sentiment all point towards an ANC–DA tie-up. What militates against it are the powerful ideological affinities and historical ties between the ANC, MK and EFF, along with concern within the ANC that the DA has gained more electorally from the GNU partnership than it has. And there is polling evidence that supports that view. In an SRF/CS survey, 66% of respondents rated the DA's performance in the GNU positively, against just 40% for the ANC. Conversely, nearly half — 49% — rated the ANC's performance poorly, compared with only 15% for the DA. The ANC is running out of ways to arrest its decline. Worse, every remaining option carries a substantial risk of accelerating it..Follow WSM on X @TheJaundicedEye.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.

WSM: ANC’s coalition maths: a partner it can’t stomach, or allies who’ll cost it more

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