A recent report by Mistra has identified Johannesburg as one of the most turbulent municipalities in South Africa's post-2021 coalition era. Alongside Karoo Hoogland, Johannesburg has experienced six administrations, according to the 2026 Mistra Coalitions Barometer. The report examined 80 municipalities that became hung at some point after the 2021 local government elections. Many other municipalities have also experienced considerable political turmoil, with 46 going through more than one administration.
The Mistra report cautions that a change of administration is not necessarily the same as a coalition collapse. Out of 101 endings, 58 were collapses, in which the coalition's largest member lost office. In 38 cases, the coalition was rebuilt around the same anchor party, which kept the mayoralty in 29 of them. The report highlights that coalition government in metros is markedly less stable than elsewhere, with nine of the 19 metro administrations included in its statistical model having collapsed.
The report found that metro coalitions tended to be more complex, with an average of 3.4 veto players, compared with 2.3 in non-metro administrations. Each additional veto player was associated with collapse at about 1.25 times the rate. However, Mistra notes that there are too few metro collapses in the 2026 dataset to reliably separate the effects of metro status and coalition complexity.
Despite the political instability, the report found no statistically reliable association between coalition collapses and municipal audit outcomes. The research compared each municipality's 2024/25 audit outcome with the number of coalition collapses it had experienced during the preceding four years. The comparison covered 78 of the 80 municipalities because two 2024/25 audits were still incomplete.
The report provides a useful proxy for administrative effectiveness in South African local government, with 46 municipalities having stable audit outcomes, 19 improving, and 13 declining. Two municipalities, Maluti-a-Phofung and Nala, could not be placed because their 2024/25 audits were still pending. The finding does not settle the broader question of how coalition instability affects governance.
Minority governments were common in the municipalities examined by Mistra, but they were significantly less durable than governments with a majority. Across all 175 administrations, minority government was the most common size category, accounting for 82 administrations, or 46.9%. However, they accounted for only 38.8% of governing time because they tended to be shorter-lived.
The report identifies two mechanisms through which minority governments can survive: a supporter-sustained minority government, in which a party outside the governing coalition agrees to keep it in office without joining it, and a minority government that survives because the opposition is fragmented. Six minority governments formed in 2021 were still in office at the data cut-off, with a lifespan of 1,559 days.
Key points
- Johannesburg and Karoo Hoogland are the most turbulent municipalities in South Africa's post-2021 coalition era, with six administrations each.
- The report found no statistically reliable association between coalition collapses and municipal audit outcomes.
- Minority governments are common but rarely durable, with a median lifespan of 529 days, compared with 959 days for other administrations.
