Richard Wilkinson: The importance of winning outright majorities in the Gauteng metros

Key topics:DA may lead Johannesburg but faces coalition limits without majority.Mayor’s power is constrained; Council controls all major decisions.Smaller parties and voter turnout are crucial for DA’s majority path..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 at 5:30am 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..By Richard Wilkinson .In my first essay on How to Fix Joburg, I analysed the prospects of the Democratic Alliance (DA) securing 50% of the vote in the City of Johannesburg at the local government elections expected to be held in November 2026. I argued that while an outright DA majority was unlikely, it remained within the realm of possibility, and I set out the conditions that would need to be met for such an outcome to occur.If the DA falls short of 50%, it is nevertheless likely to emerge as the largest party in Council. The difficulty it faces is that its natural allies are both few in number and tiny in size: the Freedom Front (FF) and the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) each secure roughly 1% of the vote in Johannesburg. The most probable outcome, therefore, is a DA plurality without an outright majority. In that scenario, the DA would need to enter into a governing arrangement under which Helen Zille is elected Mayor at the head of a DA–ANC coalition government.In this article, I explain why the role of Mayor will differ fundamentally depending on whether or not the DA secures an outright majority in the 2026 elections. The lack of separation of powers in local governmentAt the national level, the Constitution establishes a clear separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. Executive authority is vested in the President, who appoints the Cabinet, while legislative authority resides with Parliament. The provincial sphere mirrors this structure. Executive power is vested in the Premier of each province, while legislative authority is exercised by the provincial legislature.Of course, executive power is not unlimited. As was demonstrated last year, the President and the Minister of Finance cannot raise the VAT rate from 15% to 17% by decree. Such a change requires the explicit approval of Parliament, as only Parliament may make, amend or repeal legislation. Cabinet ministers must likewise secure parliamentary approval for their departmental budgets each year. Most importantly, Parliament retains the ultimate mechanism of political accountability over the executive: a motion of no confidence, which may be passed at any time and for any reason, and which results in the immediate removal of the President and the Cabinet..Read more:.Helen Zille’s high-stakes gamble: Can the DA take Johannesburg? - Nicholas Lorimer.In practice, however, the scope of national executive authority in South Africa is immense. The President and Cabinet are able to run the national administration with a high degree of autonomy from Parliament. Ministers enjoy substantial discretion to appoint and dismiss senior civil servants, to shape policy and to direct its implementation within their departments with relatively little obstruction. This is why President Ramaphosa, despite his party holding only 159 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, is able to govern in a relatively independent manner.The position is very different in the local sphere of government. Section 151(2) of the Constitution provides that “the executive and legislative authority of a municipality is vested in its Municipal Council.” This provision is of fundamental importance. Rather than a clear separation between executive and legislative branches, all municipal power is effectively concentrated in a single body: the Municipal Council.South Africans may instinctively regard “the Mayor” as a powerful figure in our towns and cities. Yet the word “Mayor” does not even appear in the Constitution. By contrast, the term “Municipal Council” appears 58 times, underscoring how firmly the Constitution locates power in local government in the Council itself, rather than in the office of the Mayor.It is true that national legislation confers some powers on the Mayor. But these powers are fairly high-level, broadly framed and weakly specified. In essence, the Mayor is authorised to identify the needs of the municipality, recommend strategies and programmes, evaluate progress against key performance indicators as well as exercise general oversight over service delivery. The Mayor is also tasked with leading the preparation of the Integrated Development Plan and the municipal budget. Yet these functions have limited practical effect unless they are supported and approved by Council. Without Council endorsement, the Mayor’s plans remain proposals rather than instruments of execution. How decisions are made in local governmentAgainst this backdrop, we can introduce what I call the First Iron Law of South African local government:Every decision of consequence in a municipality requires a resolution of Council.In effect, the Municipal Council functions as the municipality’s parliament. Seats in Council are allocated to political parties in proportion to the votes they received in the most recent local government election. By way of illustration, in Johannesburg the ANC secured 33.6% of the vote in the 2021 local government election and was accordingly allocated 91 of the 270 seats in Council (33.7% of the seats). The DA, with 26.1% of the vote, holds 71 of the 270 seats (26.3% of the seats).In practice, Municipal Councils exercise their executive authority through the adoption of resolutions. For example: Initiating an investigation into the City Manager or other senior officials for serious misconduct requires a resolution to be passed by Council.Dismissing the City Manager or other senior officials requires a separate resolution to be passed by Council.Appointing or dismissing Heads of Department and other senior managers requires resolutions to be passed by Council.Adopting or amending performance agreements for the City Manager and other senior officials requires resolutions to be passed by Council.Disposing of municipal land and significant capital assets requires a resolution to be passed by Council.Amending the supply chain management, procurement, credit control, indigent or human resources policies requires resolutions to be passed by Council.Adopting or amending the municipality’s organisational structure requires a resolution to be passed by Council.Approving intergovernmental agreements and public-private partnerships require resolutions to be passed by Council. The rigidity of this system is not merely theoretical. In one incident I witnessed in Ekurhuleni, a corporation proposed donating immovable property to a municipal old-age home in Germiston. The EFF, which held the balance of power in Council, refused to support the resolution until it received a detailed breakdown of the racial demographics of the home’s residents. As a result, the matter had to be rolled over to the following month because the acceptance of a donated property requires a formal Council resolution. The same logic applies to matters of almost comical triviality: even the renaming of a dog park in Ekurhuleni required a resolution of Council.Council meetings are held monthly, usually in the final week of the month. Unsurprisingly, there is a substantial backlog of resolutions that must be debated and voted on. In large metropolitan municipalities such as Johannesburg, Tshwane or Ekurhuleni, a single monthly Council agenda can exceed 1,000 pages. To cope with this volume, a Mayor typically requires a team of at least half a dozen people to prepare summaries and briefs simply to stay on top of the detail. Council meetings are scheduled to begin at 10am but frequently start much later due to delays and obstruction. It is not uncommon for them to continue until 2am or even 3am the following morning.You might ask whether it is always necessary to control 50% plus one of the seats in Council. What if some ANC councillors are absent? What if the EFF abstains on a particular motion? Is it not possible for a minority government to pass resolutions?While this is theoretically possible, in practice it rarely works because of the quorum requirement. Section 160(3) of the Constitution provides that “a majority of the members of a Municipal Council must be present before a vote may be taken on any matter.” Accordingly, if the ANC senses that it may lose a vote – for example, where the numbers stand at 130 versus 125, with 15 councillors absent – the 125 councillors on the losing side can simply leave the chamber. By doing so, they deprive the meeting of a quorum and prevent the vote from proceeding.In addition, the Constitution stipulates that certain decisions – including the passing of by-laws, the approval of budgets, the imposition of rates and taxes and the raising of loans – require the support of a majority of all councillors, not merely a majority of those present. As a result, a victory of 130 votes to 125, with 15 councillors absent or abstaining, is insufficient. In such cases, a minimum of 136 affirmative votes is required, regardless of the opposition’s attendance.And so if the quorum rule doesn’t get you, this rule eventually will. This inescapable reality leads to the Second Iron Law of Local Government in South Africa:If you want to govern a municipality with any degree of decisiveness, your party or coalition must command a majority of seats in Council.In Johannesburg, this means securing at least 136 of the 270 seats in Council. In office – but not in powerAs this analysis shows, a Mayor may enter office with ambitious plans and laudable objectives. Yet without the ability to secure the passage of resolutions in Council, she lacks the practical power to deliver any meaningful change. What, then, would this mean for Helen Zille if she were elected Mayor of Johannesburg at the head of a DA–ANC coalition?At this point, the First and Second Iron Laws of South African local government give rise to a Third Iron Law:If you govern in coalition with the ANC, you can make major decisions only with the ANC’s consent – because you need the ANC’s votes to pass the relevant resolutions in Council.Investigate the City Manager? Only with the consent of the ANC. Dismiss the City Manager? Only with the consent of the ANC. Appoint a competent successor as City Manager? Only with the consent of the ANC. Initiate investigations into corrupt officials, many of whom were deployed to their positions under the previous administration? Only with the consent of the ANC. Restructure the civil service? Only with the consent of the ANC. Rename a dog park? Only with the consent of the ANC.Make no mistake: if you are the Mayor you will certainly look the part. Your face will feature prominently on the City’s website and a portrait of you wearing the mayoral chain will hang in municipal offices across the city. You will be driven around in an official car accompanied by a team of bodyguards.But this is a very dangerous thing, because when South African citizens see all of this they understandably conclude: “This is a powerful person. This is clearly the person in charge. We voted for her. Her party won the most votes. She won the election. She has the power to spend money, to approve contracts and to hire and fire people.” Little do they know that, in reality, the legal position is entirely different. I vividly recall an episode in Ekurhuleni where the DA-led minority government proposed selling underutilised municipal land in a poor part of the city so that it could be developed into a petrol station with shops and other amenities. The project would have brought construction activity, local economic development, and – most importantly – jobs.But the sale of municipal assets runs directly counter to ANC and EFF ideology. When the item came before Council, the EFF benches began chanting, “DON’T SELL OUR LAND!” The Speaker called for a vote. The DA voted in favour of the motion. The ANC and EFF voted against it. The motion failed, and the development was halted.Despite this defeat, Tania Campbell remained Executive Mayor. After each Council meeting, she would return to the mayoral suite and be driven in the official mayoral car to her next engagement. She was in office – but was hardly in power. In charge of nothing – but blamed for everythingServing as a DA Mayor in a metropolitan municipality without a majority can feel a great deal like running a call centre for a business that has millions of very angry customers who are unable to switch their business to a competitor. The service delivery complaints that flood your inbox are relentless. In some areas, residents have gone weeks without electricity or water. Then there is the endless catalogue of crises: potholes and sinkholes, unpaid service providers, striking bus drivers, violent taxi associations, exploding gas tankers, collapsing bridges, missing children, land invasions, assassinations, floods, fires, billing-system failures, hijacked buildings and perpetual Council chaos.Layered on top of these crises are other interruptions: plots to kidnap the Mayor’s wife, bricks hurled through office windows, escaped pet tigers (seriously), G20 jamborees and embassy invitations. Every week brings some “new thing” or shiny distraction..Read more:.John Matisonn: DA now SA’s most stable large party.The danger, in these circumstances, is that the Mayor spends all her time firefighting short-term crises and attending to ceremonial engagements, without ever being able to step back and confront the deeper strategic problems that actually determine whether a municipality improves or regresses.Perhaps the most acute crisis Tania Campbell faced in Ekurhuleni was the 2023 waste removal backlog. For weeks, refuse piled up in Kempton Park, Alberton and other suburbs. The immediate cause was a shortage of waste removal trucks, with one report indicating that 57% of hydraulic refuse vehicles were standing in workshops awaiting maintenance. At least in part, the problem appeared to stem from the failure to issue a tender for tyre repairs.The first challenge in a situation like this is simply to establish the facts. The most obvious question is: how many trucks do we have, and how many are actually operational? In practice, no one can give a clear answer, because the vehicle fleet audit that was requested six months ago is still outstanding. As for the waste removal contractors, they insist they have not been paid. If that is true, why not? What, exactly, is the underlying problem?Gradually, a suspicion begins to take hold among DA politicians: are we being deliberately undermined by the administration? Are the contractors linked to ANC or EFF politicians? Is someone keeping trucks off the road in order to sabotage our government?In desperation, you conclude that something decisive has to be done. Underperforming line managers must be disciplined or dismissed. Yet disciplining mid-level managers and junior staff is an HR function that falls outside the Mayor’s authority – it is the responsibility of the City Manager. You therefore instruct the City Manager that there must be consequence management. And yet the wheels seem to turn very slowly while refuse continues to pile up and the emails keep flooding in.Well then, what about dismissing the City Manager or some of the Heads of Department? Great idea – but this requires a majority in Council. And so you are reduced to running a call centre, politely asking officials to do their jobs while functioning as a glorified spokesperson for the true locus of power in the municipality: the administration. The triumph of administrative power over political powerAll of this points to the extent to which real power in local government has shifted away from elected politicians and towards the municipal administration.By “the administration” I mean the cohort of roughly 200 senior managers and heads of department who are permanently employed by the municipality and who supervise Johannesburg’s 40,000 strong municipal workforce (30,000 in Tshwane, 20,000 in Ekurhuleni). HODs, divisional heads, group heads, senior managers – they carry a bewildering array of titles, with salaries to match. At the apex of this structure sits the municipality’s chief executive officer: the City Manager.And virtually all of these officials, from the City Manager downwards, are beneficiaries of ANC cadre deployment or EFF fighter deployment in one form or another. On several occasions, DA Members of the Mayoral Committee would discover that senior officials in their departments were in fact full-blooded EFF activists. But unlike their colleagues in Council, instead of wearing red overalls, these fighters were wearing suits and ties.And so it turns out that evicting the ANC from the mayoral office is the easy part; dislodging cadres and fighters from the administration is far more difficult. The Mayor remains the political head of the municipality and may issue instructions to the City Manager. But the nuts and bolts of governance – human resources, procurement, supply chain management, inventory, the design and implementation of systems and controls, employee discipline, finance, and so on – remain firmly within the domain of the administration.In South Africa, it is easy to make speeches and announce plans and priorities. But what ultimately makes or breaks a politician is whether those plans can actually be implemented. For this reason, the relationship between the Mayor and the City Manager in any municipality is critically important. Where a DA Mayor governs without a majority in Council, he or she becomes heavily dependent on the City Manager. A Mayor who lacks a Council majority cannot dismiss the City Manager – and both parties are acutely aware of that fact.In Ekurhuleni, Tania Campbell endured the excruciating experience of working with Imogen Mashazi as City Manager – a figure whose later performance before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry (where she appeared adorned with R 3.5 million worth of Birkin bags and Bulgari jewellery) was so dismal that the Sunday Times named her “Mampara of the Year”.Relations between Campbell and Mashazi initially started off relatively well – or at least they appeared to. But in the final months of Campbell’s tenure, Mashazi stopped attending scheduled meetings and ceased even responding to communications from the Mayor altogether. In the end, Mashazi attempted to convene Council meetings to remove Campbell – an act for which she had no authority and which required urgent litigation to interdict.But, eventually, Campbell was ousted and Mashazi simply moved on to her next Mayor – who lasted less than a year. As one Ekurhuleni veteran once said to me: “This is Imogen’s city – we just live in it.”People often ask why Tshwane is in the dreadful condition it is in, given that the DA has occupied the mayoral office for seven of the past nine years. A large part of the answer is that the DA did not hold a majority between 2016 and 2021. In the 2016 election, the DA won 42% of the vote, compared to the ANC’s 38%, while the EFF, with 11%, effectively held the balance of power.Following the 2021 local government elections, Randall Williams – and later Cilliers Brink – led a five-party coalition that held a narrow 108–106 majority in Tshwane. For a brief period, this majority allowed the political leadership to act decisively against the administration. Disciplinary processes were initiated against the so-called “Rooiwal Five” – a group of senior water and procurement officials alleged to have facilitated the award of a multi-million-rand tender to upgrade the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Plant to companies linked to Edwin Sodi. The project collapsed catastrophically and was followed by a deadly cholera outbreak in Hammanskraal.It has now been 15 months since ActionSA chose to remove Brink and support the installation of an ANC–EFF coalition government. It is not clear what progress has been made in respect of the Rooiwal disciplinaries since then.And so, being a DA Mayor in a minority government can feel like being strapped into the driver’s seat of a bus as it hurtles off a cliff. You can pull on various levers, turn the steering wheel left and right and slam the brake pedal but you soon realise that none of these controls are actually connected to anything. The only visible change is cosmetic: the bus is now painted blue rather than green, with a large DA sticker on its side. The inevitable crash still follows – and the public and the media duly blame you and your party for it. Can Zille get to 50% – or at least to 48% – in Johannesburg?All of this leads to the central question: is there any realistic path for Helen Zille to secure a majority in Johannesburg, and thereby govern without the ANC?As I explained in my first essay on How to Fix Joburg, there is a plausible path forward for the DA that rests on two key strategic pillars. The first pillar is massive differential turnout. The DA would need to achieve exceptionally high levels of supporter turnout – better even than its previous best performance in 2016 – while the ANC, MK and EFF would need to suffer very poor turnout, akin to their performance in 2021.The second pillar is consolidation. Non-ANC voters would need to coalesce behind the DA, with smaller parties – such as ActionSA, the Patriotic Alliance (PA), Rise Mzansi and BOSA – being compressed to almost nothing. The first pillar of this strategy – achieving large differential turnout – appears to be gaining real traction. Helen Zille has hit the ground running in Johannesburg, and all indications suggest that she is being warmly received by the city’s long-suffering residents. The claim, often advanced in left-leaning media and academic circles, that Zille would be unpopular with black voters, is quickly dispelled when one watches her engage with regular people about pressing issues of service delivery.The difficulty lies with the second pillar of the DA’s strategy – the smaller parties. ActionSA has already suffered a precipitous collapse in Johannesburg, falling from 18.1% in 2021 to just 4.7% in 2024. But even 4.7% is around four percentage points too many from the DA’s perspective. And while ActionSA’s suburban support appears to have largely evaporated, by-election results suggest that it is still retaining at least some support in township areas.At the same time, Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance has been performing strongly in coloured communities across the rural Cape and in parts of Gauteng. In Johannesburg, the PA secured 3% of the vote in 2021 and 2.6% in 2024.The problem with ActionSA and the PA each winning around 4% in Johannesburg is that, when you account for the likes of Al-Jamah, Rize Mzansi, the PAC, GOOD and the ATM etc, ANC-aligned proxy parties could capture just over 10% of the vote in 2026. That would mean the ANC, MK and EFF collectively would need to be pushed below 40% for the DA to have any realistic shot at reaching 50%. In practical terms, this implies that the ANC would have to fall to around 15% or less in Johannesburg – a prospect that, at least for now, appears to be a bridge too far.At present, the broad consensus among polling and electoral analysts points to something like the following outcome in Johannesburg: DA 40%, ANC 20%, MK 15%, EFF 10%, ActionSA 4%, PA 4%, and others 7%. Such a result would likely produce one of two outcomes: either a DA–ANC coalition, with all the difficulties and constraints described above; or an ANC–MK–EFF–ActionSA–PA coalition, leaving the DA in opposition.Much can still change between now and November. But, at present, the single biggest obstacle standing between Helen Zille and an outright majority in Johannesburg is not the ANC, MK or the EFF. It is, rather, the residual support for ActionSA and the PA. Put differently: if ActionSA and PA voters were to consolidate behind the DA, I would be fairly confident in predicting that Zille would secure a small outright majority in November. The temperature is warmer in Pretoria – but cooler in the East RandElectorally, there are two important differences between Johannesburg and its northern neighbour, Tshwane, home to the country’s capital, Pretoria.The first difference is that the DA typically performs about five percentage points better in Tshwane than it does in Johannesburg. If the DA were to secure 40% in Johannesburg, one would therefore expect it to win around 45% in Tshwane. The second difference is the far stronger presence of the FF in Tshwane. The party won 7.7% there in the 2021 local government election and 4.3% in 2024.If the DA wins 45% in Tshwane and if the FF were to secure around 5% of the vote, then Cilliers Brink would have a realistic prospect of assembling a coalition that commands a majority in Council. Helen Zille does not enjoy the same advantage in Johannesburg, where the FF typically wins around 1%.As for Ekurhuleni, the DA generally performs about five percentage points worse there than it does in Johannesburg. On that basis, there is no realistic scenario in which the DA reaches 50% in that metro in 2026. It does, however, have a strong chance of emerging as the largest party – which would leave it with the prospect leading a coalition with the ANC. Work for the best – but plan for every outcomeThe purpose of this article is not to induce dread or despair among DA supporters. It is, however, intended to provide a necessary reality check about what lies ahead.Fortunately, even if the DA falls short in Johannesburg, there are still paths forward. Council is empowered to delegate authority to the Mayor and the Mayoral Committee, which makes the municipality’s System of Delegations Policy a critical instrument for empowering the Mayor. In addition, Johannesburg’s unique institutional structure – which includes more than a dozen municipal entities such as City Power and Joburg Water – means that the processes for appointing directors for those entities become very strategically important..Read more:.John Matisonn: DA mayors in all metros? – latest poll.And so, while DA activists should work and hope for the best, they must also plan for every possible outcome. “How to Govern Johannesburg Without a Majority” is therefore a critical topic that needs to be confronted head-on. I think it may also serve as a useful title for my third essay on How to Fix Joburg.

Richard Wilkinson: The importance of winning outright majorities in the Gauteng metros

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