In KwaZulu-Natal, the votes of next week's by-election will be a test of whether the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party is able to consolidate — at local government level — the electoral gains made on 29 May, when it took 45% of the vote in the province. (Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Residents of 23 wards in 14 municipalities will go to the polls again on 11 September to replace, among others, the councillors who moved to parliament or provincial legislatures after the 29 May general elections.
The by-elections will take place in Gauteng, North West, the Free State, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, where six municipalities — uMdoni, Ray Nkonyeni, Nkandla and KwaDukuza and eThekwini metro — have wards vacated after the recent polls.
In KwaZulu-Natal, the votes will be a test of whether the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party is able to consolidate — at local government level — the electoral gains made on 29 May, when it took 45% of the vote in the province.
To do so in eThekwini, the MK party will have to oust the Democratic Alliance (DA) from wards 33, 35 and 36, all of which the it has held for decades, but in which the Jacob Zuma-led party outstripped the ANC and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in the May election.
In ward 33, which includes Bulwer, Glenwood and Umbilo, the DA is fielding Fran Kristopher, a long-term party activist and anti-drug campaigner from Wentworth, to replace Sakhile Mngadi.
Kristopher is up against Sthembiso Madlala of the ANC and the MK party’s Mvikelawa Mkhize in a three-way battle for the ward.
The EFF, whose provincial headquarters are in the ward, has not fielded a candidate, despite the high concentration of student accommodation in the area.
Both the ANC and the EFF were virtually wiped out in the ward because of the rise of the MK party, which also brought the DA in ward 33 below the 50% mark for the first time since the 1990s.
While the ANC is contesting all three of the wards, the EFF will not contest any, an indication of how badly it has been hit in the province by the electoral losses — and the defection of key leaders including its deputy president, Floyd Shivambu, to the MK party.
Addressing a meeting to introduce Kristopher to the ward residents on Monday night, Mngadi said the DA vote there had dropped from 68% in 2021 to just over 49% in May because of the “MK phenomenon”.
“The reality of the situation that we find ourselves in is that under conditions of a very low voter turnout, we can lose this ward,” he said.
The DA’s provincial and national leaders have all campaigned in the ward before the by-election in a bid to “keep MK out”, the slogan on the bulk of its street posters and leaflets distributed in recent weeks.
KwaZulu-Natal provincial leader Francois Rodgers told the meeting that the MK party had deployed “looters” to parliament and stopping it from making further inroads was central to ensuring the survival of the city and the province.
The MK party has, in turn, gone on a charm offensive in the ward, launching a “fix it” campaign in which its volunteers carried out repairs and cleaning on public buildings, including schools. They also cleared bush, fixed broken windows and unblocked gutters at the Umbilo police station during August as part of a campaign to win the residents’ hearts and minds.
The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) will not contest ward 33 or any of the three wards in eThekwini, instead asking its supporters to back DA candidates under a deal struck between the parties last year.
The tactic was effective in the by-elections from November 2021 until the May national elections and allowed the DA and IFP to take more than a dozen wards off the ANC during that period.
The DA will back the IFP’s candidates for the Nkandla, Mpofana and Ray Nkonyeni by-elections in the hope that — like in eThekwini, uMdoni and KwaDukuza — their double teaming approach will continue to deliver.
ANC eThekwini regional secretary Musa Nciki said that he was “hopeful” that they would recover some of the ground they lost to the MK party next week, but conceded that it was not likely that they would “bounce back quickly”.
The ANC did better in last week’s by-election in ward 34 — which was won by an independent candidate — than it did in May, when it did not win a single voting district in the ward.
“There was a slight improvement. In the national and provincial elections we did not win one voter district. We won one this time, so there is a little bit of an improvement that we can see,” Nciki said.
It was also important that the ANC keep its election structures active and that it keep contesting the by-elections ahead of the 2026 local government elections, even in the wards it was not likely to win.
“It is good that we continue contesting even in those wards. If we don’t contest those structures will collapse and to revive them for elections will be another mountain to climb. It is better that we keep them working and also assess where we are making mistakes and what we can do to improve from there,” Nciki said.
“It is a work in progress.”
Four wards are up for grabs in the Mangaung municipality in the Free State, along with a single ward in the province’s Matjhabeng municipality, which includes the towns of Welkom and Virginia.
In Gauteng, ward 12 in the Mogale City local municipality is being contested by the ANC, MK party, the Patriotic Alliance, the Pan Africanist Congress, the EFF and the Organic Humanity Movement.
Ward 21 in the City of Johannesburg is also the subject of a six-way battle, with the African Transformation Movement and the African Independent Congress taking on the ANC, Patriotic Alliance, EFF and MK party for the council seat.
In North West, wards are being contested in the Naledi and Matlosana municipalities, while another three in the JB Marks municipality will choose a new councillor next week.
Last week the MK party won its first ward outside KwaZulu-Natal when it took 43% of the vote in the by-election in Photsaneng in North West.
There, MK candidate Thabiso Molefe won the Thekwane Village ward, previously held by the ANC, in a surprise victory that shocked the ANC and the EFF in the province.
The MK party will be hoping it can pull off similar results in JB Marks, where it is contesting all three wards, and in Naledi and Matlosana.