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The current trend of supposed mayoral candidates in the metros and other municipalities considered as important by certain political parties distract voters from the real value of local government elections which is essentially the only opportunity for South Africans to directly elect their representatives in the form of ward councillors.
South Africa’s electoral system is based on proportional representation which basically means a voter elects a political party and in turn, the elected party picks someone to assign to a role be it president, premier or mayor. The exception is only in the case of ward councillors who are elected directly.
Accordingly, the law provides for a different mechanism in the event wants to remove a ward councilor with the outcome being that the particular party automatically loses the ward seat if a councilor can no longer serve in the role whether is because of death, incarceration, resignation or expulsion in which case a by-election is triggered.
However a proportional representation councilor, can, just like a premier and a president, be removed by their political party without hustle.
The difference, particularly the difficulty of removing a ward councilor as explained above, is not by accident but intended to protect the voter’s choice in the event a party wanted to, for any reason remove the person who would have won a ward seat on its behalf.
In terms of the Constitution and elections legislation, no one elects a Mayor, a Premier, Minister, MEC or President. Some political parties, most notably the Democratic Alliance, pick so-called mayoral candidates as part of the party’s unique way of doing things just as it has so-called shadow ministers, shadow premiers and so on. The DA is within its rights to have this bizarre way of doing things. However, with the 2026 Local Government Elections, many political parties including the ANC and the EFF which previously emphasised the brand of the party as opposed to the individual candidate, have now joined in on the mayoral candidates madness. This legally unsound notion has potential to mislead voters into thinking they could elect a mayor when they absolutely can’t. In fact if anything, this creates room for political parties to manipulate and betray voter interests.
A political may run a campaign on the back of the popularity of a particular candidate which it may name a mayoral candidate, boosting its support even in wards where it had fielded unappealing candidates, win an election and then put someone else as mayor and not necessarily that supporters were told was the mayoral candidate.
If this happens and it can, voters would have absolutely no recourse and therefore their vote would not have served their interest but that of the political party.
It is against this background that the Reporter Newspaper believes the Independent Electoral Commission, as it carries out its voter education programmes, must articulate the dynamics of a local government election including the undeniable truth that there’s no such a thing as a mayoral candidate but only a contesting political party. Even an independent candidate has to contest in a ward even if they wish to be a mayor after the elections.
