The ANC Has Broken Johannesburg, and Its Voters Are Walking Away

Ask a grandmother in Soweto when she last had water running steadily from her tap. Ask a young man in Gqeberha whether his life has improved since he first marked a ballot in 2018. Then ask yourself why the party that broke apartheid's chains is now asking those same people to believe in it again.

On Wednesday, South Africans stood in line from before dawn to vote in municipal elections. More than 29 million people were registered. Yet in the last local elections in 2021, only 46 percent of them bothered to cast a vote. That number is not apathy. It is a verdict, and the people who render it are tired of being lied to about potholes, broken traffic lights, and taps that run dry for weeks.

The African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, has now fallen below 50 percent support in municipal elections, and opinion polls suggest it could slip below 40 percent this time. Think about that. The movement that led the liberation struggle against white minority rule is sliding toward minority support in the very cities where its promises were supposed to become concrete. Mandela's people are being abandoned by Mandela's party.

Johannesburg tells the story most clearly. This is South Africa's commercial heart, the city that generates more economic output than most African countries, and for decades it was an ANC stronghold. Today it has had seven mayors since 2021 as successive coalitions collapsed. Seven mayors in five years. Any business owner in Johannesburg will tell you what that instability costs: contracts delayed, investors spooked, young graduates leaving for Cape Town or abroad. And residents, the people who should matter most, endure power cuts and water shortages in a city that should be the continent's showcase.

The national picture is no better. The ANC lost its outright parliamentary majority in 2024 and was forced into a coalition with the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties. That is a democratic outcome, and we should celebrate it. Coalition politics is what healthy multiparty democracy looks like when voters refuse to hand any party a blank cheque. But coalitions only work when they deliver. In too many municipalities, they have become a revolving door of backroom deals, collapsed governments, and officials who treat public office as a salary rather than a duty.

Who benefits from this chaos? Not the unemployed. Not the security guard who wants his neighbourhood safe after dark. Not the street vendor in Soweto who loses a day's income every time the electricity goes off. The beneficiaries are the patronage networks that feed on municipal tenders, the officials who inflate contracts for water infrastructure that never gets built, and the political entrepreneurs who turn every service failure into a rallying cry for their own faction. South Africans already know the scars of state capture under the Zuma years. The Zondo Commission laid bare how public institutions were hollowed out for private gain. Local government is where that rot reaches the ordinary citizen, because the pothole, the dry tap, and the dark street are the visible costs of looted budgets.

Let us be precise about what is at stake beyond one election. The outcome will shape the 2029 national contest and the internal succession battle inside the ANC as President Cyril Ramaphosa approaches the end of his term as party leader in 2027. Former president Jacob Zuma's uMkhonto weSizwe party is strong in eThekwini, which includes Durban, and its rise is a warning. When anger has nowhere credible to go, it goes to demagogues. South Africa has seen what populism of grievance does to an economy. We must not let frustration be harvested by men who offer slogans instead of solutions.

Here is the uncomfortable truth the ANC leadership must hear: the answer to bad governance is not to ask voters for more patience. Voters have given the ANC three decades of patience. The answer is to govern as if every service failure is a personal betrayal, because for the families living through it, it is.

What should happen next? Municipal governments need to be run like the businesses they are responsible for managing. Water and electricity utilities should be audited publicly, with contracts, maintenance logs, and spending published online so that any resident can see where the money went. Municipalities that cannot collect revenue or maintain infrastructure should face independent intervention, not endless ministerial shuffling. Procurement must be opened to competitive bidding with real penalties for officials who rig tenders. And the courts must be allowed to prosecute corruption without political interference.

Africa already has proof that a better way exists. Botswana built one of the continent's most respected governance records by combining competitive elections, a professional civil service, and disciplined management of its diamond wealth. Mauritius has shown that transparent institutions and open markets can lift a small island state into the upper tier of African development indicators. Closer to home, South Africa's own Constitutional Court has repeatedly shown that independent judges can hold powerful people to account. The building blocks exist. What is missing is the political will to use them at the municipal level, where power meets the people.

Civil society has a role too. Community organisations, business chambers, and churches in every township should track service delivery promises and publish scorecards before the next election. Private firms that depend on reliable power and water should invest in local accountability, not only in lobbying. And regional bodies such as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community should promote open municipal budgeting as a standard of good governance, because a continent that cannot manage its cities cannot claim to manage its future.

So here is what we demand. We demand that every party contesting these elections publish a costed plan for water, electricity, and policing in its city, and that voters hold them to it. We demand that the next mayor of Johannesburg, whoever that is, serve a full term without the revolving-door collapses that have cost this city years of progress. We demand that the national government stop treating local failure as a regional problem and start treating it as a constitutional emergency. And we demand that every citizen who stood in line this week keep watching, keep asking, and refuse to accept excuses.

South Africa's cities are not doomed. They are being mismanaged, and mismanagement is a choice made by people who can be replaced. Results are expected on Sunday. When they arrive, do not let the headlines about coalitions distract you from the question that matters most. Who will turn on the taps? Who will light the streets? Who will answer to the people who voted?

The ANC gave us freedom. Now it must earn our trust, one municipality at a time, or watch the voters it once inspired walk away for good.

Based on reporting by RFI