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DA supporters. Picture: Gallo Images/Lefty Shivambu
DA supporters. Picture: Gallo Images/Lefty Shivambu

The DA’s election machinery is already fired up for the 2026/27 local government election, with a particular focus on ailing Gauteng metros. But it won’t be easy.

Johannesburg should be ripe for the picking: it is crumbling and in deep crisis under the ANC-led coalition that has been in power since 2022. However, the DA’s electoral performance in Johannesburg since the 2011 local government election paints a worrying picture.

It posted a strong showing in that election with 34.6% of the vote, increased from 27.5% in 2006. Growth slowed towards 2016, but still its support grew to 38.4%. However, in 2021 the DA regressed sharply with the rise of dozens of smaller parties, most notably its own splinter, ActionSA. It obtained only 26% of the vote. 

In the national election last year — a different dynamic entirely, but still an indication of support — the DA’s support in Johannesburg stood at 24.9%. Clearly, to win over Gauteng’s most prized metro it will have to shift voter sentiment dramatically in its favour. It has only a little more than two years to do this. 

The self-serving coalition between the ANC and EFF in the erstwhile City of Gold culminated in weak “puppet” mayors presiding over what was once Africa’s biggest-budget city from 2022. The ANC took over the mayoral chain again in 2024, but it has been largely ineffectual in stemming the deep decline in services and infrastructure across the city. 

While the entire Gauteng is experiencing a water crisis, Johannesburg’s water infrastructure suffers from particularly severe underinvestment in maintenance. Joburg Water was set up to handle all facets of water provision, from billing to maintenance and infrastructure, in the early 2000s.

The model was based on international best practice and driven by then city manager Ketso Gordhan, but Joburg Water went from a cash-flush entity with an R800m surplus when he exited, to languishing in ICU less than two decades later. 

In the early 2010s the ANC-led government realised that water was a key money spinner for the city. It took over key aspects of the business, including customer support and billing, in a bid to centralise services. The end result proved disastrous. 

Now, more than a decade later, Joburg Water’s maintenance, infrastructure and renewal backlog stands at R27bn. The city’s non-revenue water — piped into the reticulation system but not paid for — stands at a staggering 46%. No city in the world could provide water sustainably under these circumstances.

Every other aspect of delivery in the city is also failing, from overgrown verges to garbage-strewn streets, power outages, hijacked, crime-infested buildings, and pothole-blighted streets. Even the 90-year-old city library has not been spared, shutting its doors for “maintenance” in 2021. It remains closed, four years on. 

The problems in the city are as deep as the chasm in Lilian Ngoyi Street (formerly Bree Street), which collapsed in July 2023 due to a methane gas explosion and remains in disrepair. 

But can the DA muster the support to snatch the city from the ANC, despite its own decline in support there? Complicating matters is that the DA had a short stint running the city, which had little impact.

DA federal executive chair Helen Zille explained this week why the party battled to reverse Johannesburg’s decline in its brief time at the helm. She said the administrators in the city at the time were “deployed cadres” who blocked progress, and services were sabotaged so that tenders could go out for water tankers.

Zille suggested there are hardly any competent managers left in the city, and little to no maintenance has taken place for more than 30 years. She announced a raft of measures the party is putting in place to attract “new talent” to the party ahead of the polls, to fill crucial posts such as mayor and councillors that are essential to turning around the country’s metros, including Johannesburg.

Two new factors are at play come 2026: the DA’s internal overhaul after the 2019 election, the effects of which showed in the 2024 national election, and the DA’s entry into the government of national unity (GNU).

The aftermath of the 2019 overhaul is that if re-elected in 2026 Zille, as federal council chair, is set to preside over the party’s preparation for the next local election, which could take place between November next year and March 2027.

In local elections, national issues as well as local ones have played a crucial role in swaying the electorate. The DA’s success and impact in the GNU will be crucial to retaining support and growing outside its traditional base. 

The ANC in Joburg is clearly in terminal decline; the key question is, who will replace it? 

• Marrian is Business Day editor-at-large.

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