On Wednesday, South Africans will vote in local elections widely presented as a referendum on service delivery. Within days, parties will claim victory in municipalities across the country, but in many councils the party receiving the most votes may still be unable to govern. The decisive contest will begin after voters have left the polling stations, when political parties negotiate the majorities that the electorate has not given any one of them.
In a hung council, there are effectively two elections. The first distributes seats according to voters’ preferences, while the second determines who controls the municipality. Unlike the public vote, this second contest rewards something that electoral results alone cannot reveal: the ability to make or prevent a governing majority.
Joburg offers a revealing illustration. After the 2021 election, its council contained 18 parties. Al Jama-ah, with just three seats, subsequently supplied a mayor because larger parties could not agree on candidates from their own ranks. Its limited electoral weight made its candidates acceptable to competing blocs unwilling to concede the mayoralty to one another. The episode illustrates how fragmented power can elevate a minor party, although holding office should not be confused with controlling the coalition that sustains it.
A party with relatively few votes can wield considerable influence when larger parties need its support to form a municipal government. Its bargaining power comes from the difficulty of finding an alternative partner, rather than from the number of seats it holds. This creates what might be called a pivot premium: the additional influence a party gains because its support is difficult to replace. That advantage can disappear when another viable coalition becomes possible.
Consider a municipality where two competing blocs fall short of a majority. A party with relatively few seats may be able to give either bloc the numbers it needs to govern, allowing it to negotiate executive positions, committee representation or policy commitments beyond what its electoral support might suggest. There is nothing inherently improper about such bargaining, which is part of forming a coalition government. The concern arises when the price of securing a majority includes concessions that are difficult for residents to scrutinise or hold anyone accountable for.
What makes this mechanism particularly revealing is that the premium is not determined by electoral arithmetic alone. Larger parties help establish its value through the coalitions they refuse, the compromises they reject and the partners they exclude. Political red lines may reflect genuine ideological commitments, but where they eliminate viable governing combinations, they also make the remaining acceptable partners harder to replace. A smaller party can therefore gain bargaining power without winning another vote, simply because larger parties have narrowed their own options.
This complicates the familiar interpretation of electoral fragmentation. The emergence of smaller parties often reflects dissatisfaction with established organisations and demands for political representation. But once votes have been counted, the significance of a small party may depend less on the size of its mandate than on the coalition choices available to larger parties. Electoral fragmentation distributes seats, but the willingness of parties to govern together determines how much bargaining power those seats carry.
The value of this bargaining power also depends on how easily governing agreements can be undone. When coalitions can be repeatedly renegotiated, a party’s pivotal position may become a continuing source of leverage rather than a one-off advantage during government formation. Proposed coalition legislation seeks to introduce more formal agreements and greater constraints on repeated motions of no confidence. Such rules cannot eliminate the pivot premium, but they may change how frequently it can be exercised. Stronger commitments could make defections more costly and reduce opportunities to reopen negotiations over political office and policy concessions. The rules governing coalitions therefore shape not only their stability, but also the continuing bargaining value of each party’s support.
This is why coalition instability cannot be reduced to political immaturity or small-party opportunism. Some breakdowns reflect genuine policy disagreements, leadership failures or competing electoral strategies. Others emerge because the governing arrangements themselves make renegotiation attractive. Larger parties are not merely victims of this process. Their rivalries and exclusions can create the scarcity from which smaller parties derive leverage.
The consequences extend beyond the allocation of political office. Municipal administrations require continuity to maintain infrastructure, manage contracts and sustain investment decisions. Coalition instability does not explain the origins of South Africa’s municipal crisis, much of which predates fragmented councils. It can, however, deepen inherited weaknesses when executive turnover disrupts appointments, delays decisions or changes administrative priorities.
The deeper democratic problem is therefore not coalition bargaining itself, but the limited accountability surrounding its consequences. Voters can establish which parties gained support but cannot always determine what commitments secured a mayoral appointment or which concessions subsequently shaped municipal decisions. Formal agreements and clearer rules would not eliminate disproportionate bargaining power but could make its exercise more visible and its consequences easier to attribute.
On Wednesday, citizens will determine how council seats are distributed. In the days that follow, councillors will determine what those seats are worth. The most consequential bargains may be shaped as much by the choices larger parties refuse to make as by the demands smaller parties advance.
For residents waiting for reliable water supply, functioning roads and accountable government, the second election will matter because it determines not simply who governs, but whose political choices shape the authority exercised in their name.
Prof Joseph Sekhampu is the Chief Director at the North-West University Business School