South Africans vote in municipal elections, with anger over water, power and crime threatening fresh losses for the ANC

Queues formed from sunrise at Lawley, an informal settlement south of Johannesburg, and across the country. Voters are choosing councils for eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district councils and 205 local councils, and those councils then choose the mayors. More than 1.4 million special votes were cast on Monday and Tuesday. President Cyril Ramaphosa was due to vote at Hyde Park High School in Johannesburg.

The complaints are basic services. Unreliable water and electricity, unemployment, crime and a shortage of affordable housing ranked at the top of voters' concerns in polling before the vote. The ANC, the party of Nelson Mandela that ended white minority rule in 1994, fell below 50 percent in the 2021 municipal elections and lost its national parliamentary majority in 2024, which forced it into a coalition with the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties. Polls put its support below 40 percent this time, and one polling firm put it under a third, down from 45.6 percent in 2021.

Johannesburg, the country's commercial hub, is the biggest prize. The city has had five mayors in four years and is run by a fragile ANC led coalition. The Democratic Alliance put up its former national leader, Helen Zille, who is 75, for mayor. A News24 poll put her at 36 percent, the largest share but short of a majority, which would leave her needing coalition partners, possibly including the ANC itself. In Durban, former President Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe party is contesting its first local elections and polling strongly.

Final results are expected on Sunday. They will shape the fight to succeed Ramaphosa as ANC leader at the party conference in December 2027, and the shape of the country's politics heading into the 2029 national election. With no party large enough to replace the ANC outright in most cities, more unstable coalition councils are the likely outcome, and those coalitions are part of what voters blame for the failing services.