South Africa’s elections: Water, migration and a waning ANC

“We’ve decided not to vote. At all,” Vatiswa Zoya said two days before voters in South Africa cast their ballots for new municipal government leaders. “What is the point? We will still sleep hungry.”

These very same frustrations are what will lead 22-year-old Lindokuhle Mbandazayo to the polls, although she has yet to decide where to place her cross.

“When we vote for councilors, we ask them to fix the area,” Mbandazayo told DW. “The electricity goes off regularly here. There is also sewage in the streets, and we have to jump over this. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed here.”

Both women live in Tembisa, a township in Ekurhuleni, a municipality on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city. Both express an “embedded frustration” over their living conditions. 

Sanusha Naidu, an analyst at the Institute for Global Dialogue, said it was this “embedded frustration” that prompts people to vote.

“Your vote actually puts some of these political parties’ feet to the fire, but I think that frustration is also inherently coming from the fact that it’s not going to happen overnight,” Naidu said.

On Wednesday, South Africans will vote in municipal elections that will determine control of the country’s largest cities and test whether the African National Congress (ANC), the leading party in the national government coalition, continues its electoral decline.

Here are five things to know about Wednesday’s election.

1. Water is a key voter issue

Many voters will be motivated by whether they can shower or not on election day, as many parts of South Africa experience water supply issues.

In Johannesburg, several neighborhoods have faced water cuts and rationing for weeks as old infrastructure struggles to keep up with supply.

“Every province has an issue. So if we take for example drinking water quality, half of the drinking water systems in South Africa are not fit for drinking,” Ferrial Adam, executive director of water rights NGO WaterCAN, told DW at a protest over water cuts in Johannesburg.

“Almost 70% of our wastewater treatment works are in a critical state and spewing sewage into rivers and streams across the country,” Adam said. “It is a definite water crisis across South Africa,” she added.

In Tshwane, a metropolitan area that includes South Africa’s administrative capital, Pretoria, a recent water treatment failure left more than 400 residents sick.

Sanusha Naidu, an analyst at the Institute for Global Dialogue, said that, despite widespread worries about water quality and supply, many candidates have not provided adequate details on their solutions.  

“I think their promises have been very transactional,” Naidu said. “Their promises are always, you know: ‘We’re going to bring water to your community. We’re going to make sure the taps are flowing. We’re going to ensure that we’re going to deal with the old infrastructure around water, etc.’ But I don’t think they’ve dug deeper in terms of understanding what the budgets say about water access.”

2. ANC in decline

Many voters place blame for the state of municipalities on the African National Congress, which has historically held an outright majority in most municipalities.

In 2016 the ANC secured 53.91% of the overall vote and had an outright majority in 161 of 213 councils. In 2021, that decreased to 45.59% of the overall vote with a majority in 122 of 213 municipalities. 

The global marketing research firm Ipsos predicts that the party’s support could fall as low as 30% in this election, resulting in an increase in coalition-run municipalities. 

Naidu said the party had struggled to keep up with the expectations of evolving voters, particularly the Millennial and Gen Zdemographics, who now make up the bulk of voters.  

“You have an electorate that wants to see who are these people that you’re putting out there to say you’re going to make things work for us,” Naidu said.  

Mbandazayo is one such voter. She is casting a ballot in her second election and said she was looking for a new voice in politics.

“We need change,” Mbandazayo said. “I am considering voting for another party because the current party is not doing well for us because we’ve been voting for them for a long time.”  

3. Migration a big talking point  

South Africa has seen a wave of protests around migration for several months, ramping up in October with opposition to the country’s asylum process. 

According to Murmur Intelligence, a digital analysis firm, parties such as Action SA, the MK Party and the Patriotic Alliance have used immigration as a campaign issue.

“The party that might claim the most benefit from that sentiment … is Action SA,” Murmur Intelligence co-founder Aldu Cornelissen said.

“They would make a clear argument that we need to get rid of illegal immigrants. We need to improve immigration. We need to protect our borders, which are all legitimate concerns, right? So, if any of the parties could capitalize on this sentiment, it would be them.”

“But for what percentage?” Cornelissen said. “I would wager between 6% and 8%, roughly.”

Those margins may seem low, but, in an increasingly fractured political landscape, parties are fighting for every vote.

According to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), 136,760 candidates are contesting across the country, with 75 parties contesting in Johannesburg, 70 in Tshwane and 69 in eThekwini (Durban and surrounding areas).  

4. Election misinformation  

Fake news and false AI-generated content have become a feature in this election, with the IEC investigating more than 700 complaints of disinformation. One of the prominent claims has been an accusation that the ANC plans to mobilize asylum seekers to vote for them.

Asylum-seekers, refugees and permanent residents can’t legally vote in South African elections regardless of how long they’ve been in the country.

William Bird, director of media monitoring agency Moxii Africa, said misinformation and disinformation “are now kind of part and parcel of your standard buildup to any electoral environment, wherever you are in the world.”  

“What we see with disinformation is that it always picks up on whatever the hot-button news issues are, as well as the standard kind of tropes about elections,” he said. He added that there will always be “some bunch of clowns” saying the elections are rigged. 

“And, in South Africa’s case, there’s no evidence to support that at all. The IEC is one of the best electoral-management bodies in the world. So of course, you then see people that are either wanting to destabilize, or they’re wanting to just shake things up and make people scared or angry, and so they use those kinds of narratives. And that, unfortunately, is becoming an increasingly common trait,” Bird told DW.  

Bird said social media platforms often “incentivize and deliberately encourage people” to attack others online. 

5. Will people make it to the polls?

Municipal election turnout has historically been lower than turnout in national elections. In 2016, turnout was at 57.95% and dropped to 45.87%. In 2024, in the most recent national elections, turnout was at 58.64%.

Naidu said the election would ultimately depend less on online discussions or campaign slogans and more on how many people make it to the polls. 

Voters will mark two ballots — one for a direct local representative and a second for a political party under a proportional representation (PR) system.

Seats allocated through the PR vote account for half of all council seats, making them as important as the direct votes for councilors and this is where voter turnout becomes a key element.  

“That is why political parties are saying to people, go out and vote, go out and vote, because if you don’t go out and vote, it has an impact on the calculation of what you win as a PR vote in the council and the seats that you get,” she said. In turn, this affects the makeup of each municipality and whether new coalition governments will form.  

Additional reporting by Ahmed Kajee and Sofia Christensen