South Africa’s Zille Leads in Race for Johannesburg Mayor: Poll

Veteran South African opposition politician Helen Zille is the front-runner to become Johannesburg’s next mayor, a new poll showed, but she’ll likely fall short of securing an outright majority in municipal elections to be held on Nov. 4.

Zille is set to receive 36% of the votes, according to a News 24/SABI Strategy Group survey published on Sunday, well ahead of the 27% who’d back an African National Congress candidate — but short of the 50% threshold that would allow her to govern without the support of other parties.

Zille’s Democratic Alliance party, which will be the actual choice on the ballot, got a more modest 29% but was still ahead of the ANC on 23%, which would represent a 10-percentage point retreat from its 2021 result.

The new poll was at odds with the findings of a survey in early September which showed the ANC in the lead at 31% in Johannesburg, compared with 28% for the DA.

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Johannesburg is the nation’s commercial hub but has become a poster child for dysfunctional city governance in South Africa. It’s a key race in an election that will test whether the ANC can stall declining popularity with voters who are angry over high unemployment, poor public services, crime and corruption.

The party of Nelson Mandela lost its parliamentary majority in the 2024 general election for the first time since the end of White-minority rule 30 years earlier.

The ANC has since governed at the national level in a coalition with smaller rivals and the DA, the second-largest party. Even as the ANC has declined in the polls, the so-called government of national unity has won favor from investors for its pro-business approach. South Africa’s next national elections are due to be held in 2029.

The N24/SABI poll was conducted between Aug. 25 and Sept. 17 among a sample of 1,000 registered Johannesburg voters. It measured both the popularity of the individual parties and who voters would choose if they could select an individual candidate such as Zille.