Dada Morero, the African National Congress (ANC) mayor of Johannesburg, will not be the party’s mayoral candidate for the city in the November local government elections.

This is because he received zero votes when the ANC’s Greater Johannesburg regional executive committee (REC) convened this week to nominate a mayoral candidate for Johannesburg.

The incumbent mayor of South Africa’s economic capital was proposed and then rejected by the committee. That outcome is extraordinary. But it is also, in its way, the logical conclusion of a process that began months earlier — when the ANC tried to recruit a series of credible, experienced candidates for the job, and each of them said no.

Loyiso Masuku, the deputy mayor and chair of the REC, received 24 nominations, Jabu Moleketi, a former deputy finance minister under Thabo Mbeki, and Makhosazana Ndlela, a deputy chief whip for the ANC’s Johannesburg caucus, each received 23, and Morero, despite being proposed as an additional nomination alongside Ndlela, received zero. The names of Masuku, Moleketi, and Ndlela will now proceed to the ANC’s provincial and national structures for a final determination.

A mayor proposed by his own regional leadership and rejected by his own committee signals something beyond ordinary factional manoeuvring. It signals a consensus that Morero has become a liability the party cannot afford going into a local government election it is already at risk of losing.

The Names That Walked Away

The ANC’s search for a Jo’burg mayoral candidate was, by the accounts of those close to the process, a humbling exercise. Former Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa was approached and declined. Businessman and another former Gauteng premier Tokyo Sexwale was reportedly on the wish list. ABSA bank chief executive Kenny Fihla – who, together with Ketso Gordhan and Roland Hunter, formed the team that helped reimagine Johannesburg under the ANC in 1999 – had just taken up his new role and was not interested.

The ANC eventually opened the nomination process to the public, a move framed as democratic renewal, but which also reflected the party’s inability to attract the leadership it needed from within its own ranks.

This is a striking admission about a liberation movement that governed South Africa for three decades, and it arrived just as the most formidable opposition candidate the ANC in Johannesburg has faced in years was already deep into her campaign.

Zille’s Campaign and What the Polling Shows

The Democratic Alliance (DA) announced Helen Zille as its Johannesburg mayoral candidate in September 2025. She is 75 years old, a former mayor of Cape Town, former premier of the Western Cape, and a former leader of the DA, and she has now set her sights on governing Johannesburg.

Her campaign has been anything but passive. She has been filmed navigating a flooded street in Soweto in an inflatable raft, directing traffic, and filming from inside potholes. Municipal crews were reportedly dispatched to the Dobsonville drainage problem shortly after she had released footage of her inspecting the area.

Polling conducted by the Social Research Foundation, in conjunction with The Common Sense, in February and March this year, reveals the extent to which the DA is now leading the ANC in the race to govern Johannesburg.

The DA is not certain to win. It is polling at 39%, far ahead of the ANC’s 30% but also far short of a majority. The city’s proportional representation system makes an outright majority of seats difficult for any single party, and Zille has acknowledged she will almost certainly need coalition partners to govern.

ANC Cupboard Is Bare

Against this, the ANC is preparing to field one of three candidates whose names emerged only after a series of credible alternatives declined the job, and after the incumbent mayor was rejected by his own regional committee.

None of the possible names match Zille in terms of her gravitas and achievements, and the fact that the ANC struggles to put forward a serious candidate to become the mayor of South Africa’s most important city demonstrates the extent of the party’s fall. But Zille still faces an uphill battle and victory is far from assured.

Johannesburg, and the country, votes on 4 November 2026.