As the November 4 local government elections approach, political parties are gearing up for a landscape that analysts predict will be dominated by hung councils and coalition governance.
Despite this reality, party leaders are locked in a debate over whether power-sharing can bring stability or drive municipal collapse.
The ANC argues that coalitions naturally lead to instability and poor service delivery, while the Patriotic Alliance (PA) maintains that power-sharing can succeed with clear leadership.
Meanwhile, the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party points to the City of Johannesburg – which has had five mayors since 2021 – warning that constant coalition turmoil can significantly impact a city’s institutional memory and administrative stability.
But a new research report released last week suggests that the reality is more nuanced.
The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection’s (Mistra) latest Coalitions Barometer found that many administrations survived far longer than the political turmoil around coalition government might suggest.
The barometer examined 80 municipalities that experienced coalition or minority government at some point between the 2021 local elections and February 2026.
The municipalities went through 175 administrations. Of the 70 administrations formed after the 2021 elections, 23 were still in their original form at the end of the study period.
The figures challenge the idea that coalition governments are doomed to fall apart. They do not suggest that every coalition has worked, or that political stability automatically means better services.
Dr Laurence Caromba, the lead researcher behind the barometer, said the rate at which administrations were toppled through motions of no confidence has slowed.
Caromba said this suggested parties may be learning to work together based on his conversations with political actors. Alternatively, he said the most unstable coalitions may already have collapsed, leaving those better able to survive.
A key metric raised was that coalitions that excluded the largest party in a council collapsed at about four times the rate of those that included it.
Caromba stressed that this did not give the largest party an automatic right to govern.
He said smaller parties can form a legitimate government if they command a majority. But the findings suggest that keeping the largest party out can make a coalition harder to sustain.
In 16 cases, the ANC was the largest party in a coalition but allowed a smaller partner to take the mayoralty. The PA secured nine mayoralties despite never being the largest party in those coalitions.
The ANC and the DA, meanwhile, have never governed together in a municipal coalition, despite being partners in the Government of National Unity.
Mistra found that the two continued to move motions of no confidence against each other’s local administrations, though less often over time.
PA spokesperson Steve Motale said the party’s experience of coalition government had been mixed. He said coalitions could work when mayors understood the need to work with their partners, secured support on major issues and built agreement around a clear vision for the municipality.
The PA said its involvement in local government had allowed it to contribute to service delivery and infrastructure projects. Motale cited party president Gayton McKenzie’s time as mayor of the Central Karoo District Municipality as an example of what the party could achieve.
But the PA had also withdrawn from several municipal coalitions when it was expected to support decisions or a record of delivery with which it disagreed.
He said the party was not yet in talks with other parties about post-election coalitions, but would be willing to work with any party.
Motale acknowledged that more hung councils could bring further instability. He hoped parties would become more mature about coalition government and put residents first.
The ANC sees the experience differently. Spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said coalitions had proved unstable and often compromised service delivery.
She said the ANC had prioritised citizens’ interests where it governed as a coalition partner, citing Tshwane as an example of stability and service delivery.
“We believe, for accountability and faster services to the people, the ANC must win outright,” Bhengu-Motsiri said, and will only enter coalition negotiations once the results are known.
While the MK Party said it was focused on obtaining an outright win in the elections, the party’s Joburg mayoral candidate Bongani Baloyi addressed the challenges that coalitions bring in his State of Johannesburg address this week.
Baloyi said one of the crucial lessons from coalition governance was that “too much of the city changes when the politician changes”.
“An engineer’s work should not disappear because a coalition collapses. A capital project should not lose its institutional memory because the mayor changes. Johannesburg does not need another mayor. It needs a plan that survives the mayor,” he said.
Political analyst Susan Booysen described coalition government as a “new and growing normal”.
Based on her own monitoring and analysis of polling trends, Booysen said she would not be surprised if close to half of South Africa’s 257 municipalities were governed through coalitions after the November 4 elections. That is her forecast, not a prediction made by Mistra.
For voters, she argued, the election increasingly has two stages. They first choose a party, and after the results are announced, the parties negotiate on who will govern.
A signed coalition agreement is no guarantee that the arrangement will last, Booysen said. Personal relationships, political culture, and competing interests can all put pressure on a coalition, particularly when political opportunities change.