607 Wards Have Flipped From the ANC: Who Took Them?

The ANC is losing wards, not just councils. With 50% of voting districts counted in South Africa’s 2026 local elections, 607 of the 2,523 wards the ANC led in 2021 now have another party in front. That is almost one in four. This video shows which wards turned, who took them, and where. MK, led by former president Jacob Zuma, is contesting its first-ever local election. ActionSA is winning in Gauteng’s big cities, and local parties are taking wards in small towns. CHAPTERS 0:00 Half counted, one in four wards 0:22 The national picture 0:52 Who is taking the wards 1:43 KwaZulu-Natal 2:19 Gauteng 2:55 The rest of the country 3:13 What it means Snapshot taken from the IEC live results dashboard at 18:54 on 5 November 2026 (12,177 of 23,696 voting districts counted). Early counts do not report evenly and ward leads can still change. Ward comparison: the party in front in each ward now versus the party in front in the same ward in the 2021 IEC results. This is our own analysis, not an official IEC figure. Next: The Real Cost of Wednesday’s Election (And What Your Mayor Earns). Subscribe for the 75% update. Sources: IEC results dashboard (results.elections.org.za), IEC 2021 results, MDB boundaries, Sentinel-2 cloudless imagery by EOX.