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South Africa’s local elections unfold amid corruption, political killings, corporate funding and weak ward structures. The article argues that multiparty politics increasingly resembles a marketplace rather than substantive democracy.
By ASHRAF PATEL
For millions of poor and unemployed people, the stakes couldn’t be higher on November 4 when local government elections take place.
In a world of cost-of-living crises, gangsterism, social media polarisation and disinformation, as well as high-profile public social influencers, this mirrors the polarisation of politics in the United States, Brazil, India, etc. South Africa faces multiple geopolitical headwinds from energy wars, trade wars and a mega migration crisis.
At ground zero, local elections elicit raw emotion, volatile energy, sharp divisions and violence in this sphere of government closest to citizens who live cheek by jowl in communities.
When our Constitution was proclaimed and adopted in 1996, establishing the three spheres of government, there were merely a handful of leading parties in the first local elections in 1996. Our National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 is underpinned by the laudable concept of creating a “democratic developmental state”. Is this still achievable?
Let’s unpack the core drivers eroding substantive democracy.
Corruption, political killings and the capture of mega budgets
The deepening corrosion and violence in the local government ecosystem have been in the making for decades. The Madlanga Commission has now exposed the dark underbelly in South African communities – from political killings to gender-based violence (GBV) and South African Police Service (SAPS) complicity.
It is here that gang culture – from taxi bosses to tenderpreneurs, the construction mafia and an array of stakeholders – plies its trade to influence and control budgets and programmes for narrow interests. Hence the sharp contestation among local government candidates, where the stakes are very high for posts within metros and districts.
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In this cauldron, the national state’s shortcomings are exposed, where decades of deregulation, mismanagement of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and neoliberalism have eroded state capacity, and the effects filter downwards.
Political funding and corporate capture of political parties
In capitalist democracies, big business and corporations have vast social power. A cursory glance at the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) political party funding records paints a chilling picture, with JSE-listed corporations, private families and controversial multinationals such as Betway making generous donations and bets on pro-business parties – DA, ActionSA, PA, BOSA et al. This is a clear trend of corporate capture, with our elections akin to an online betting market, with these power brokers “making bets” on our democracy.
The ward councillor as an orphan in local governance
While Members of Parliament (MPs) in the National Assembly and members of provincial legislatures (MPLs) in provinces have a structured and linear governance model and “a healthy social distance” from the people, the ward councillor occupies a precarious role in the system. On the one hand, they interface with communities and face a bewildering array of demands from communities, while local ward committees are toothless.
Here, ward councillors depend on their party or other coalition partners for direction.
It should be noted that ward councillors have little influence on budget allocation and, like any citizen, can only engage entities responsible for service delivery.
Council meetings are long and tedious, with major decisions hobbled by horse-trading on any number of items at any given time.
An array of ward committees with no power becomes merely symbolic and a chamber of frustration.
Likewise, the annual Integrated Development Plan (IDP), which makes public input mandatory, becomes a mere compliance process, with little follow-up to residents who take quality time in trusting the process.
Similarly, South Africa’s Spatial Land Use Management Act is intended to promote spatial justice and sustainability. But over decades, wealthier suburbs have seen the bulk of new developments. The contradiction deepens in townships where there is a flurry of shopping centres, but very little social housing and sports facilities, etc., required to meet our NDP and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda.
Disconnect of national-local policy matrix on utility services
Another driver is the decline of service delivery amidst a high cost-of-living crisis and ballooning debt, where today municipalities owe Eskom approximately R400 billion.
Here, local government is a “policy orphan” as it does not really influence national policy or become involved in decisions when Cabinet and Treasury decide to take yet another World Bank loan for Eskom.
It is local government – mayors, members of mayoral committees (MMCs), city management and communities – that has to deal with the fallout of high utility prices when Eskom gets yet another National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) increase. This contradiction deepens when Eskom received another 8.9% increase last month amidst its R30 billion net profit. Diabolical!
This structural policy-regulatory disconnect and negative local impacts on poorer councils, together with the mismanagement disconnect, further erode the capacity and quality of democratic development at local level.
Ward councillors and proportional representation (PR) councillors directly elected at local level have very little, if any, policymaking influence on national policy, especially SOEs, where utility prices have a direct bearing on the citizens who elected them.
Today, our multiparty democracy resembles a supermarket with a bewildering array of policy products. For example, in Ward 9 in Lenasia South, Johannesburg, over 61 candidates are contesting just one ward.
This is not substantive democracy, but an imported, repurposed “multiparty democracy” rooted in “free-market consumerism” – one packaged without any health warning labels on the dangers of “the product”, this one being one that distracts from real governance and delivery.
The South African Local Government Association (Salga) has always been on the back foot, and is now slowly also upping its capacity-building interventions. CEO Sithole Mbanga, in presenting to the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Committee in the National Assembly, explained:
“Salga had seven ‘strategic’ capacity-building priorities which covered governance, leadership and management; financial management and viability; infrastructure and service delivery; municipal planning; spatial transformation and inclusion; worker development and education; and business continuity and disaster management.”
South Africa’s local government elections 2026 take place in the context of a deepening socio-economic crisis and erosion of substantive democracy.
To be sure, we have regular elections which are presumably fair and meet IEC standards. But amid our deepening social crisis, GBV, corruption, policy disconnect and lack of capacity, alongside the rise of controversial social media influencers, endless litigation, online hate and misinformation, rampant corruption and the new corporate-private capture of political parties, our local elections in the Government of National Unity (GNU) era are anything but democratic or fair or good.
Substantively, we have a chaotic, captured, hollowed-out, violent and corrosive local government system where the bulk of our people live amidst crime, utility breakdowns, gangsterism, xenophobia and mass confusion on the margins. A pitiful lived reality.
Ashraf Patel is a research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue specialising in areas of digital economy, trade and development justice in the global south.
