The local government election (LGE) will be held on 4 November this year.

President Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement this afternoon.

The elections are being held almost five years to the day since the last LGE, which was held on 1 November 2021.

This LGE is the first to be held since the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority in the 2024 national elections and is promising to be a bruising contest for the party.

A record number of municipal councils are also likely to hung (where no party wins a majority), including most of South Africa’s eight metros.

Much of the focus of the election will be on South Africa’s biggest city, Johannesburg, where Democratic Alliance (DA) stalwart and former Cape Town mayor and Western Cape premier Helen Zille is standing as the party’s mayoral candidate.

Polling conducted by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) in conjunction with The Common Sense found that the DA was polling at nearly 40% in Johannesburg, nearly ten points more than the ANC.

The SRF and The Common Sense also conducted polling in Tshwane, where the DA was also leading (45% to the ANC’s 40%) and in eThekwini, where the uMkhonto weSizwe Party was the biggest party, polling at 44%, with the DA at 28%, and the ANC only at 8%. The Inkatha Freedom Party polled at 18% in eThekwini.

While the LGE is only for municipal councils and has no bearing on the make-up of Parliament or any of the nine provincial legislatures, the results will show how political trends are shaping up ahead of the next national election, due to be held in 2029.