South Africa stands at its most important political crossroads since 1994. The results of the 2026 local government elections have created an opportunity for the African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) to enter into a governing alliance that could put the country’s embittered political past behind it and establish the foundations for decades of stability and economic success.

The scale of the opportunity is extraordinary.

The ANC fell from 46.1% in 2021 to 31.0% in 2026, its lowest electoral result since 1994. The DA secured 24.7%, while the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and ActionSA collectively secured 22.0%. For the first time, the ANC and the broader Charter movement collectively fell below 50.0% of the national vote. The political order that has dominated South Africa for more than three decades has been fundamentally disrupted.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the country’s cities. Only Cape Town returned an outright majority, with the DA securing 56.4%. The DA also emerged as the largest party in Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, and Nelson Mandela Bay. The ANC retained its position as the largest party in only two metros, Buffalo City and Mangaung, without winning majorities in either.

Across South Africa, the number of hung municipalities has more than doubled, from 66 in 2021 to 138 in 2026. Nearly two-thirds of the country’s municipalities now require coalition agreements.

But within this political fragmentation lies an extraordinary opportunity.

Together, the ANC and DA could govern 158 of South Africa’s 213 municipalities, representing 74.2% of the total and covering almost 80.0% of the population. They could also govern seven of the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities (the two parties alone could not govern eThekwini). This would be an immensely stabilising result.

Such an arrangement would extend the Government of National Unity (GNU) into local government, creating the possibility of coordinated reform across all three tiers of government.

For the ANC, this makes more strategic sense than the alternatives. In predominantly black metropolitan voting districts, the ANC lost approximately 25 percentage points, while the EFF lost nine. Across those same districts, the MKP gained approximately 14 points, ActionSA 10, but the DA only five. The DA is therefore not a direct competitor for ANC votes, whereas its Charter splinters are.

If the ANC now does a deal with the splinters, that will cost South Africa its current GNU, only to set the ANC up for continued losses to its Charter rivals. Coalitions do not work between parties that fish in the same pond. The DA fishes in the middle-class pond, and the ANC fishes in the aspirant middle-class pond on the urban fringes and also the rural pond of older voters who live vicariously through the hope that their children and grandchildren in the aspirant pond will join the middle classes. It is the perfect pact, therefore, because policies that secure a future for the middle class are indistinguishable from those that create one for the aspirant middle class.

Outside of an ANC-DA pact, South Africa has no other coalition option that offers all of this, a national majority, political stability, and the prospect of much-improved economic growth.

In ANC succession terms, such a pact would also raise the odds of Patrice Motsepe replacing Cyril Ramaphosa as president at the end of next year, which would be a further stabilising influence on the country.

More importantly, that pact would represent something far greater than a coalition agreement.

For generations, South African politics has been organised around the divisions of the country’s past. An enduring governing alliance between the ANC and DA would offer the prospect of moving beyond those divisions and establishing a new political centre built around practical cooperation, economic growth, and the improved living standards needed to lock in South Africa’s democracy as a single unitary state.

That is the ideal to which this newspaper aspires, a pact across the country’s historical divides with the potential to deliver the economic growth to hold the union together by pulling millions of poor people into the middle classes over the next 20 years.

The rewards could be historic, as financial markets hinted this week, with South Africa’s 10-year government bond yield falling from 8.73% on 30 October to approximately 8.44% on 9 November, on the expectation that the local election result would see the ANC-DA GNU pact extended to local government level.

The alternative is considerably less encouraging.

An ActionSA, ANC, MKP, and EFF alliance, which is also under discussion, might offer the ANC the illusion of political control and preserve local government patronage networks, but would also elevate the parties responsible for taking much of the ANC’s electoral support. In time, those rivals, all fishing in the same pond, will tear at each other until each is a small party presiding over a government pursuing increasingly populist and counterproductive policies. The economic growth rate won’t recover, and millions of people will remain trapped in unemployment and poverty. The ANC succession race would most likely deliver an unappealing successor to Ramaphosa.

South Africa therefore faces an essentially binary choice. One path offers an opportunity to consolidate the political centre, strengthen the GNU, and build the foundations for sustained growth. The other leads towards fragmented populist coalitions, continued political instability, weakened investor confidence, and diminishing prospects for economic recovery. Four decades ago, the country’s leaders chose the high road. This newspaper will press them to do so again.