Neighbors of ANC ex-presidents live the political shift

Former presidents of the ANC now live under the flags of rival parties, at least as far as their home wards are concerned, and the people who share those streets with them have been living with the consequences of that political shift long before the results were tallied.

In Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal, the ward containing former president Jacob Zuma’s home stayed with the IFP, and by the narrowest of margins. The party held the seat by two votes, taking 44.87%, or 2,192 ballots, against 44.83%, or 2,190, for the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), according to results released by the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC). For the residents of that ward, the difference between two parties separated by two votes will be felt in the delivery of services under a municipality the IFP will continue to run. Across Nkandla’s 14 wards, MKP managed to win only three, with the IFP taking the rest. The party now controls five municipalities outright in the province, adding Nkandla to Mthonjaneni, Nongoma, Msinga and Ulundi.

The IFP thanked voters for the trust shown in it. “We receive this mandate with humility and reaffirm our commitment to serving communities through accountable, ethical and effective local government,” the party stated.

The MKP, for its part, has told its newly elected councillors to put service delivery first as preparations begin for the 2029 national and provincial elections, a signal directed at the communities those councillors will now serve.

Perhaps the starkest human story sits in Qunu, the Eastern Cape village where Nelson Mandela lived and is buried, in the King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality. For the first time since the inaugural municipal polls in 1996, the ANC did not field a candidate there. Ward 19 was won by the African Transformation Movement’s Sabelo Ngqeleni. Another ATM proportional representation councillor is expected to be Qunu’s traditional leader, iNkosikazi Nokwanele Balizulu, whose homestead sits across the N2 road from Mandela’s gravesite and home. For a village so closely bound to the ANC’s history, the absence of the party’s name on the ballot marked a quiet but profound change in the political landscape of everyday life.

In Johannesburg, the pattern repeated at the doorsteps of sitting and former presidents. DA candidate Jo van Onselen won ward 90, where President Cyril Ramaphosa lives and voted. Where Ramaphosa previously voted at Hitekani Primary School in ward 11 in Chiawelo, Soweto, the ANC held on with 34.4%. Ramaphosa, who is on record as having praised municipalities run by the DA, now finds himself in the company of the other former presidents whose home wards have slipped from ANC control.

Another DA candidate, Dominic Günther Bauer, secured ward 73 in the City of Johannesburg, where former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe reside. In that ward the ANC could manage just over 10% of the vote.

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal described its own results as a mixed bag while insisting it was pleased with the overall outcome. “Where we did not do well, we lost municipalities and wards in KwaZulu-Natal as the ANC, which we did not expect but we accept the results as the democratic outcome,” provincial convenor Mike Mabuyakhulu said. He argued the results were encouraging, pointing to wards the party won, and said its support grew from 16.9% in 2024 to more than 20% this year, from 598,000 votes to 637,000, evidence, he said, that the party still has support in the province. “We urge our communities to come out in their numbers because if the turnout was more than the 49% we saw, the ANC would have secured more votes,” he said.

At national level, the ANC held its first post-election national executive committee meeting, an extended special sitting expected to deliberate on the outcome. The party said the results placed before it a serious political responsibility to listen to the people, confront its shortcomings and provide leadership as municipalities prepare to establish governments. “The ANC’s response must not be reduced to negotiations for municipal positions. It must address the lives of South Africans, the stability of local government and the renewal of the movement,” the party said. The meeting will also consider and adopt a mandating guide for the ANC’s coalitions negotiations team and receive reports on initial engagements with other political parties.

Meanwhile, one community still waits to have its say. In the Siyancuma Local Municipality in Douglas, Northern Cape, the IEC will hold a revote in the Bongani Community Hall voting district after a group of people stormed a voting station while counting was under way and destroyed ballot papers, over 100 cast but uncounted ballots. About 1,300 ballots had been cast at that voting station. Six people appeared before the Douglas Magistrate’s Court charged with contravening the Municipal Electoral Act, malicious damage to property, assault and intimidation. The revote, ordered for next Wednesday as part of the 2026 local government elections under the act’s provision for lost, destroyed or unlawfully removed ballots, is intended, the commission said, “to give the affected community a fair and equal opportunity to exercise their democratic right to vote.”