ANTHONY BUTLER | Parties may strike deniable deals to avoid formal coalitions

If centralisation is just used to hide an unspoken coalition deal, it will only postpone the instability of councils

First published in Business Day

November 12, 2026

After 4 November, South Africa’s two biggest parties revealed a shared sentiment about coalition talks: they are simply too important to leave to councillors.

ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula championed a party that “speaks with one voice in every council”. The DA said its talks would be run under the authority of its Federal Executive. After five years of mayors toppled council by council, this instinct was understandable. But attempted central control may produce something more fragile than either party wants to acknowledge.

The arithmetic leaves the parties with little wiggle room. The ANC fell to 31% of the vote and it controls just 53 councils outright. The DA, on around 25%, leads five of eight metros but has a majority only in Cape Town. An ANC-DA combination clears the line in every metro except eThekwini. Almost every other combination is thin, or fails.

However, a formal ANC-DA pact in the cities would be toxic for both. The ANC cannot tell members already hostile towards the government of national unity that it now wants to prop up DA mayors in Gauteng. The DA campaigned on ending “coalition chaos”, not on sharing mayoral committees with the party it blames for the mess.

This means we may get a fudge. Mbalula has hinted that the ANC is willing to sit in opposition. Sitting in opposition while abstaining, or quietly voting for DA mayors in return for DA votes for ANC mayors in Buffalo City and Mangaung, seems to let both parties have it both ways. Each would run minority administrations, fill every mayoral committee seat with their own people, and deny that any coalition exists.

Both parties might find such a deniable deal, struck centrally, initially attractive. The trouble is that the fudge is likely to come unstuck.

First, abstaining in key votes will not be enough. In Johannesburg the DA has 91 of 270 seats. ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has said bluntly that Helen Zille can become mayor only if the ANC supports her. Support means votes, and votes are hard to describe as opposition.

Second, mayors and speakers are still elected by secret ballot, because the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill that would have changed that was not passed in time. Head offices are asking councillors to vote, unseen, for rivals they have just campaigned against. Where margins are thin, or money changes hands, one quiet defection can decide a city. In Mangaung, the ANC has just 35 of 101 seats. Even an arrangement with the EFF would leave it dependent on smaller parties to secure a majority.

Third, the Constitution requires a majority of all councillors to pass a budget, set rates or adopt by-laws, and a failed budget triggers mandatory provincial intervention. This means confidence-and-supply agreements in all but name. The first test arrives in May and June 2027, just months before the ANC’s December elective conference, when party factions will want to show distance from the DA.

We have seen this before. The DA-led administrations established after 2016 depended on EFF support, without formal coalition agreements. That arrangement eventually unravelled, as the EFF withdrew its support and the political relationships sustaining minority government broke down. A government that exists at a rival’s pleasure is governed by that rival’s internal politics.

Centralisation was meant to bring discipline to coalition politics. If it is just used to hide an unspoken coalition deal, it will only postpone the instability it was meant to cure. If the ANC and DA really need each other in the metros, they may eventually have to publish written confidence-and-supply agreements covering budgets and no-confidence motions. Voters would then at least know who to blame when the water stops. You can’t run a country by forever kicking the fudge down the road.

Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town