How declining public trust could impact the upcoming local government elections
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) on Friday said the upcoming local government elections will be conducted in what is described as the most challenging and tough pre-electoral climate observed over the last 30 years.
The electoral body said this was based on conclusions reached by the face-to-face survey conducted between October 2025 and February 2026.
The elections will be held on November 4 and parties and independent candidates will contest 10,439 seats in 214 municipalities.
Briefing the joint meeting of three parliamentary committees, deputy chief electoral officer Masego Sheburi said the survey and research told them that there was widespread disillusionment with political leadership, decline in confidence in core political institutions and dissatisfaction with the way democracy is functioning.
“Citizens have low expectation of responsiveness and delivery from the government and that shapes the perception of democracy and drives disillusionment which will manifest in intended abstention from participation in the elections,” he said.
Sheburi told the MPs that there was greater divide between the people who had voted in the past and those that had not.
“The local government elections will be highly competitive in an environment of low trust and high risk,” he said.
According to Sheburi, the highest perception recorded was in 2004 with 63% of people indicating happiness with democracy.
“The rate of dissatisfaction has moved from 25% in 2024 to 68% in 2025/26.”
He also said the number of people who think the country was going in the wrong direction has increased.
“There is correlation to the study we did and those done by Government Communications and Markhinor studies.”
Sheburi said the survey has shown that the entrenched decline in trust in key political institutions – national government, Parliament, local government, political parties, courts and traditional leaders – has worsened.
The trust in the national government dropped from 69% recorded in 2004 to 19% while that of Parliament went down to 20%.
As the country heads to the municipal elections, the trust in local government also dipped from 55% to 18%, and political parties down to 11%, from 42%.
Like other institutions, the courts have also seen a decline in trust, with confidence in the IEC dropping from 74% to 32%. However, the trust among those who voted in 2024 was only 8%.
Sheburi said were the elections to be held imminently, the intention to vote will decline from 76% recorded in 2015 to 64%.
“This is not automatic. It is positive if certain things are done and people feel there is a level of responsiveness and political contestants are concerned with issues that concern them.”
Sheburi said the intention to vote was highest in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga among the people 18 and above.
At least 62% of the people nationally still believe it is a duty of all citizens to vote in an election.
Sheburi said the voter roll currently stands at 2.7 million with registered voters despite the average 34,000 monthly decline due to mortality.
“From the last national elections in 2024 and the end of May we have done what we never did to increase the voter roll by 106,000 new entrants. This is over and above the 34,000 we lose monthly owing to mortality.”
Sheburi also said there will be 4,466 wards throughout the country and the IEC has registered people who were affected by re-determination of ward boundaries.
He said as there will be 10, 439 seats across municipalities, they expected a marginal increase to the 95,000 candidate nominations received five years ago.
“We don’t have a reason to believe the trend will abate. We are going to make preparations to deal with a deluge of candidates come the opening of candidate nominations.”
The preparation for the November elections, according to Sheburi, has key dependencies such as the publishing in the government gazette of the proclamation of the election date sometime in early August.
It will be the same day the voter roll will close for those who want to register for the first time.
