“Will the Government of National Unity (GNU) survive the virulent African National Congress and Democratic Alliance local government election campaigns?” In response, I have argued that the GNU will. Contesting and litigating against each other have become the ingrained modus operandi in the ANC-DA coalitions world.
The mutual campaign attacks in South Africa’s 2026 local government elections (LGE 2026) were neither new nor surprising. The African National Congress (ANC) itself at its Riverside campaign launch declared: “We have failed.” Earlier, in 2025, President Cyril Ramaphosa told ANC councillors to emulate the well-performing Democratic Alliance (DA). The ANC’s lack of enthusiasm for its own campaign, was reflected in the fact that its 2026 campaign slogan, “Let’s continue building better communities, together” was the exact message it used in its 2021 campaign. While the ANC’s campaign insults against the often white-faced DA campaign, zoomed in on argued resistance against transformation and black progress, the DA’s weapon of choice was the ANC governance record… as the ANC had said.
The two main GNU partners have been fighting multiple by-elections against each other; they have rehearsed the contesting-cooperating modus operandi. The national level coalition, nevertheless, is not immune. Local pressures could come into play. South Africa’s political parties could arrive at a point of bartering local power for better national positioning. The latter would only be feasible after 2029 elections, but it is imaginable that a party like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), or uMkhonto we Sizwe Party (MKP), after Jacob Zuma, could rescue the ANC in crucial councils by building a joint majority in exchange for delayed 2029 rewards in the form of national coalition partnership to the ANC, after Cyril Ramaphosa.
Up to at least the eve of the local government elections of LGE 2026 the GNU held – a robust structure that withstood both turbulent campaigning and parties breeding strategic deals. There were no credible challenges or indications of a change in the “not classical” (in the explanation of one of the GNU partners) coalition. This edition of SA Coalitions Brief thus explores the current local coalitions conjuncture in the life of the GNU.
The closest it came to being threatened (viz., not threatened at all) was when ANC secretary general, Fikile Mbalula, overwhelmed by the Constitutional Court’s October 2026 lifeline to the ANC, permitting late candidate nominations, blasted that “(t)here are matters … that this movement will now have to sit down and discuss, and one of those matters is partners in the GNU, and that is the DA. We must review the DA in the GNU”. Mbalula was distressed that the DA had become an amicus curia to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) in the ANC’s late nomination battle. The DA was seen as hostile to the ANC.
Mbalula is a less than powerful GNU player. President Cyril Ramaphosa distanced himself and overruled. Ramaphosa said that the reasons for forming the GNU “still hold” and that parties with different ideologies had found a way to cooperate.
The robustness of the GNU 2024-2026 had been established well before the local government elections. The DA has repeatedly taken ANC-backed national legislation to court, for example National Health Insurance, Employment Equity, Expropriation, and Basic Education. The DA has also frequently instituted legal action against the ANC in the local sphere. Here the legal action concerned mostly procedural matters about attaining and retaining municipal power. Well-aired cases include the fleeting reinstatement of former Johannesburg DA mayor Mpho Phalatse, in Thabazimbi the removal of municipal office-bearers, and compliance with court-ordered governance measures in Metsimaholo. In Ekurhuleni, the DA brought legal challenges to council decisions, speaker rulings and governance processes following ANC coalition action.
The DA and ANC at the local level, coincidentally, may not be in formal local coalitions in the 2021-2026 period, but are not always sworn opponents. There are many degrees of coalition action, and South Africa has become a smooth operator. The DA has on multiple occasions helped ANC minority governments pass budgets or other important decisions. In Sol Plaatje, Mangaung, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay, for example, the DA has been accused of keeping the ANC in power.
Like the bulk of South Africa’s coalition agreements, this ‘confidence-and-supply light’ model does not come with formalisation. (Even the most formal agreements on coalition cooperation, to date, have often been in the distribution of municipal official-bearer positions and executive portfolios; at national level, the ultimate formalisation was in the guise of the vague, cursory 2024 Statement of Intent.) The de facto confidence-and-supply arrangements between the DA and ANC – in which the DA did not enter government but did keep the ANC in power – was simply offered where considered appropriate, without explicit mutual agreement. Where it came as repeat actions, a confidence-and-supply type of coalition can be inferred.
Regarding the introductory argument of campaign attacks, the 2026 campaign exchanges between the two main GNU partners flowed thick and fast. While the DA attacks focussed on the ANC’s corruption, local mismanagement and responsibility for economic decline, the ANC presented the DA as hankering after a privileged white past, and resisting black economic empowerment, affirmative action and employment equity. Ramaphosa crowned the line of argument with a narrative reminiscent of the height of liberation struggle: “Power belongs to the ANC.”
The DA’s severest attacks included that ANC had collapsed local government, referencing e.g., failing water and sanitation services, disintegrating roads, electricity disruptions, along with harbouring dysfunctional municipal administrations and being complicit in financial mismanagement. The DA complemented its ANC and municipal failure campaign with allusions to liberation history. It accused the ANC of fighting factional battles and defending patronage networks while abandoning the values of Nelson Mandela.
According to the ANC election campaign, the DA had failed to shed its elitist and anti-poor character and was removed from the experiences of black South Africans. It argued that while DA municipalities often present clean audits and sound administration it fails to address socio-economic inequalities.
The two parties also attacked their GNU partner’s coalition practices. The DA claimed that the ANC could not be trusted in coalitions, that the ANC rotated coalition partners opportunistically and for the sake of political control, besides using patronage to build its council majorities. In turn, Mbalula argued that the DA was acting against the spirit of the GNU but did not hesitate to partake in the benefits. It is not to be forgotten that these attacks, in both the ANC and DA, also served to appease the anti-GNU apostles.
In this sea of contest, the ship of GNU sailed on. Ahead, in all likelihood, more serious storms.