South Africa's economic heartland is at stake as opposition parties battle for control of Johannesburg, signaling a historic shift three decades after the African National Congress came to power.
The struggle for Johannesburg, reported by Daily Maverick, pits the Democratic Alliance under Helen Zille against ActionSA led by Herman Mashaba, as the ANC's municipal dominance collapses amid internal divisions and governance failures.
For South Africa, this represents far more than political chess. Johannesburg is the nation's financial and commercial capital, home to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the economic engine of the country's most populous province, Gauteng. The city's struggles with service delivery—from water shortages to electricity outages to refuse collection failures—have become emblematic of the broader challenges facing ANC-governed municipalities.
"In South Africa, as across post-conflict societies, the journey from apartheid to true equality requires generations—and constant vigilance," yet the current battle highlights how governance failures have tested citizens' patience with the party of liberation.
The DA, which has governed the Western Cape province for over a decade, promises improved service delivery and professional administration. The party points to Cape Town's relatively better infrastructure as evidence of its capacity to manage major urban centers. Helen Zille, the former Western Cape premier who now chairs the DA's federal council, has made Johannesburg a priority target.
ActionSA, founded by former Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba in 2020, positions itself as a third way—rejecting both the ANC's record of corruption and the DA's perceived compromises. Mashaba governed Johannesburg as a DA mayor from 2016 to 2019 before resigning over party direction, and his return to city politics carries the promise of an insider's knowledge of municipal dysfunction.
The ANC's implosion in Johannesburg mirrors its declining fortunes nationally. In the 2021 local elections, the party lost its outright majority in key metros for the first time, forced into unstable coalition arrangements that have produced revolving-door mayors and policy paralysis. Johannesburg has had multiple mayors in the past three years, each unable to tackle the city's mounting infrastructure crisis.
Yet the opposition's challenge is not just defeating the ANC—it's agreeing among themselves. Both the DA and ActionSA claim to offer better governance, but their competing visions for the city could result in the same coalition instability that has plagued recent administrations. Without a clear majority, either party would need coalition partners, potentially including smaller parties with their own demands.
The stakes extend beyond municipal boundaries. Johannesburg's trajectory will signal whether South Africa can transition from ANC dominance to effective multiparty governance—or whether the fragmentation of power simply produces new forms of dysfunction. For residents waiting for basic services, the question is whether any party can translate electoral ambition into administrative competence.
The battle for Johannesburg is a preview of South Africa's post-ANC future. What that future looks like—functional multiparty democracy or fragmented paralysis—remains to be written in the streets of the nation's economic capital.
