South Africa’s political landscape is heating up as the 2026 local elections approach. The ANC, DA, and emerging MKP party are vying for dominance, with MKP making waves at the EFF’s expense. Notably, DA Chair Helen Zille aims to secure control in councils, while MKP’s Floyd Shivambu targets key metros. Amid ANC instability and public dissatisfaction with municipal management, the MKP and DA see opportunity to expand their influence across the country.
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By John Matisonn ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
While GNU partners exchange insults, and election watchers anxiously await news from the US, strategists for South Africa’s three main political parties are hard at work on the crucial 2026 local election campaign.
The three parties that will count the most in 2026 are likely to be the ANC, the DA and the MKP. The MKP’s rise at the EFF’s expense was underlined recently when DA chairperson Helen Zille announced that the DA’s black membership has overtaken the EFF’s.
Zille told the SA Chamber of Commerce UK that the DA’s goal is to be the biggest party in as many local councils as possible in 2026.
Her opposite number at MKP, National Organiser Floyd Shivambu, aims to dominate at least 36 municipalities in KwaZulu-Natal, and control two of the biggest metros nationally – outright control in eThekwini and dominance in Ekurhuleni.
Shivambu’s defection from the EFF, where he was Deputy President, was a blow to the EFF and a boon to the MKP.
His official titles were Deputy President and lieutenant commander in chief of the EFF, the party’s chief whip in Parliament, as well as a party spokesperson on parliament’s finance and trade and industry committees.
He was the EFF’s key ideologue, strategist and organizer, with a national network of activists among teachers, school principals, doctors and other professionals, as well as religious groups and traditional leaders.
He also has rapport with the leftwing of the ANC’s tripartite alliance, the SA Communist Party and the trade unions, whose public statements since the GNU was established are more consistent with the MKP’s position than with Luthuli House.
The ANC will obviously fight a hard campaign in 2026. But both the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal ANC organisations –the two biggest provincial battlegrounds — are hampered by internal instability. Luthuli House has threatened to dissolve both provincial executive committees, but delayed a decision to December, in part because of a fundamental conflict between Luthuli House and the Gauteng provincial executive committee over the GNU.
By-elections since the GNU was formed show the DA benefitting from its role in the GNU. The ANC, IFP and PA are likely to grow support in some locations too, but the ANC may not end up in control of any of the country’s eight metros.
“MK will win a decisive number of municipalities,” MKP’s Shivambu told the SWMX podcast, based on local results in the May national elections. “Even among the results we are still contesting, in KZN MK was number one in 36 out of 44 municipalities, with a decisive majority (above 50%) and 40% in 20 – including eThekwini.”
Its support rose as high as 76% in some wards, and it clocked in at third place in the Ekurhuleni metro in Gauteng.
According to Shivambu’s calculations, the only two metros left where the ANC dominates are Buffalo City (formerly East London) with 53% in the national elections, and Mangaung (formerly Bloemfontein) with 49%. The rest are gone.
Shivambu added a reason voters will turn away from the ANC in towns – the ANC’s failure to resolve the fundamental systemic problem in municipalities:
“Municipalities are drifting from the ANC because on the ground people see that the municipalities are not viable under the current funding model.” People don’t think they can expect services to be delivered for that reason, which comes on top of the destruction of services by corruption.
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