First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement of 27 October as the date for this year’s local government elections has set into motion the campaigning for what will definitely be a highly contested poll.

Not only will these local government elections be taking place under unique circumstances given the Covid-19 pandemic, they will also give a clear indication of whether the parties’ losses or gains of 2016 have been reversed at all.

The by-elections held on Wednesday 21 April would have boosted the ANC’s ego while giving the DA something to be concerned about. The EFF will also have something to smile about, having increased its voter share, although it did not win any of the contested wards.

As with most elections, pundits have been quick to look at the results and the shifts in support to predict the probable trajectory of the various parties in the October elections.

But sometimes by-election outcomes are much like student representative council elections at universities – where the voting is largely influenced by the popularity of the personalities rather than that of the parties they represent. This explains why, for instance, the student wing of the moribund PAC, the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania, is able to win elections on campuses while the mother body remains in permanent ICU mode and a non-factor in all local government, provincial and national elections.

The close inspections of the outcome in the ward lost by the DA to the ANC in the Western Cape show a similar pattern. Ward 11 in Knysna was won by ANC candidate Lorraine Opperman, who had defected from the DA – after falling out with the party.

This is not to take away from the significance of the outcome, but merely to show how tricky local government elections can be. At the end of the day, the win is important for the ANC coalition, as it keeps it in control of the Knysna Municipality.

This is democracy in practice – where a community sticks with its elected representative regardless of which party they represented. Hopefully the outcome is also about the service delivery record of the councillor rather than the sheer popularity of the individual.

That said, it is the metros that we should be watching closely in the coming elections.

The year 2016 was a watershed poll where the ANC lost control of Tshwane, the City of Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay. With the help of the African Independent Congress, it managed to hold on to Ekurhuleni.

Will the Ramaphosa factor work in the ANC’s favour? Much of the governing party’s loss of those metros was attributed to the repulsive nature of former president Jacob Zuma, who was largely seen as the face of misrule and corruption in the country. The black middle and the minority groupings protested via the ballot box. That resulted in coalition governments leading in those metros. That was by far Mmusi Maimane’s biggest victory as the then DA leader, having been elected in 2015. To have the DA lead the government in three major metros was no mean feat. Although the DA/EFF marriage was short-lived, it was a major wake-up call for the ANC and perhaps the outcome that set in motion the events that led to the rejection of the Zuma-sponsored candidate by ANC branches at the Nasrec conference.

But if Ramaphosa manages to have corruption-accused ANC Secretary-General Ace Magashule removed by October, that may well boost the ANC’s chances.

Also, this time around Maimane, who now leads One South Africa, has announced that his organisation will contest in some municipalities in the upcoming local government elections and so will Herman Mashaba’s ActionSA. The DA is safe in the City of Cape Town, while the ANC sleeps easy in Buffalo City, Mangaung and eThekwini.

That makes four other metros the real battlegrounds.

But can the communities of those metros stomach another five years of the instability brought about by the volatile coalition governments?

More importantly for the DA in the upcoming election is what impact John Steenhuisen’s election as leader will have on the party’s electoral performance. Given the DA’s recent posture, where it is shifting towards the right as it seeks to rival Freedom Front Plus, the by-election results in coloured communities should worry the party.

The EFF continues to grow its share of the voter support but ward victories remain elusive. The party is still struggling to make its candidates more palatable to the communities where it contests.

Moving away from the palace politics, the October elections should be about service delivery – water, potholes and electricity distribution. Hopefully the voters will remember this when they stand in those queues ready to make their mark. DM168

This is an opinion piece by Sibusiso Ngalwa, who is the politics editor of Newzroom Afrika and chair of the South African National Editors Forum.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for free to Pick n Pay Smart Shoppers at these Pick n Pay stores.