field notes | voting + local elections | sept 19 2026

Parkview Heritage Festival. Friedrich Naumann Foundation Sub-Saharan Africa. A panel on SA’s local elections on November 4 2026: Sithembile Mbete (executive director, Public Affairs Research Institute), William Gumede (associate professor, Wits School of Governance), Peter Bruce (former editor, Business Day and Financial Mail), Mondli Makhanya (former editor, City Press) and Rob Rose (editor, Financial Mail).

It opened with two polls that disagree. The Social Research Foundation’s July poll had the DA on 42% in Johannesburg and the ANC on 18%. Ipsos, released in September, had the ANC on 31% and the DA on 27%. Mbete’s view was that polls only help with people who have already made up their minds, and Johannesburg has a lot of undecided voters.

So the panel turned to turnout, because the result depends on it.

– Mbete’s sum: a party with a loyal 50,000 voters gets 50% of the vote if 100,000 people turn out, and 33% if 150,000 do. Its supporters haven't changed. The extra 50,000 voted for someone else. The bottom line is: Who turns up matters as much as who people support, and when you stay home, everyone else decides.

– Makhanya worried that people who want the ANC out will stay home instead of voting for someone else.

– Gumede: ‘ ... too many people see not voting as actually voting ...’

– Mbete, citing HSRC polling: in 2015, 76% said they would vote if an election were held the next day. In 2025, 64%. Many of those who said no didn't see the point.

– Mbete, on 2024, the first election where middle-class and wealthy wards turned out at a much higher rate than poorer ones: ‘That is dangerous for our democracy, because if the majority of the country, which is people who are living below the poverty line, have given up on the democracy, that's not a recipe for stability, and we should all be concerned about it in the long term’.

– Rose, on what campaign strategists told him: the ANC’s focus is 2029, and it has ‘reconciled themselves to losing a lot of these metros’.

– Bruce, on what happens once the count ends: parties ‘go behind closed doors, and they do sweet little deals with themselves.’ They get 14 days to form a coalition, which is not enough time.

Quick Google:

– National turnout in the 2021 local elections was 45.86%, down from 57.94% in 2016. – Good Governance Africa

– The SRF poll used a turnout model of 53%. – The Common Sense

Local elections shape your daily life, and they’re the ones people skip. Mbete closed the conversation brilliantly with a line she borrowed from an ANC councillor in 2021: ‘You may spend your days thinking about big national issues, but everybody’s bed is in a ward. You go to sleep in a ward, and that's what affects your day.’