Why South Africa’s 2026 Coalition Talks May Get Harder

Why can more parties make coalition talks harder?

A coalition is an agreement between parties to govern together. It is often needed when no single party can govern a council alone. If more parties hold seats, negotiators may have to find common ground among more groups and settle how responsibilities will be shared.

Mistra’s 2026 Coalitions Barometer warns that political fragmentation could mean more councils without a single-party majority and more complicated agreements between parties ³. This is a warning about what may happen, not a count of how many councils will require coalitions.

What happened in municipalities after the 2021 elections?

Mistra studied 80 municipalities that became hung at some point after the 2021 local elections ¹. In 46 of them, the administration changed more than once. Johannesburg and Karoo Hoogland each had six administrations during the period described by the report ¹.

The report recorded 101 administration endings. It classified 58 as collapses, meaning the largest party in the coalition lost office. Other changes did not necessarily remove that party: in 38 cases, the arrangement was rebuilt around the same leading party, which kept the mayor’s office in 29 ¹.

Why does the report single out Johannesburg?

Johannesburg was among the municipalities with the most administration changes in Mistra’s review. The report also compared metropolitan administrations with those elsewhere: nine of the 19 metro administrations in its statistical model had collapsed, compared with a lower share outside metros ¹.

These figures describe the administrations included in the report. They show that metro coalitions in that period were less stable in the model, but they do not prove that every city will have the same experience after the 2026 elections.

Could political instability affect municipal services?

Changing alliances and motions of no confidence—a council vote on whether a leader should remain in office—can contribute to political uncertainty. Mistra’s report describes these kinds of political changes since 2021, while also saying that technical municipal structures showed resilience ³.

That suggests political turnover and the work of municipal institutions do not always move in lockstep. The source summary does not provide detailed service results or explain how resilience was assessed, so it cannot establish what residents experienced in any particular municipality.

What will residents need to find out after the 2026 vote?

The key questions will be which parties can agree to govern, whether their arrangements endure, and how the council’s political changes relate to its practical work. Mistra’s past data also shows why it is useful to distinguish a new administration from a full coalition collapse ¹³.

The supplied sources do not include the 2026 election results or say which parties will form local coalitions. Residents can look to official municipal announcements and reliable reporting for information about their own council.