The Ballot Sheet with Ray Mahlaka: Why we’re doing this

On 4 November 2026, South Africa goes to the polls in the local government elections. This is not a routine election. For Johannesburg, Cape Town and eThekwini (the three cities that carry this country’s economic weight), this is an election that will decide whether they can be pulled back from governance failures, or whether they sink further into it.

Local government elections are important. They are about whether your city works for you; whether the burst pipe outside your gate gets fixed, whether the streetlight comes back on, and whether refuse is collected before it piles up.

These are the issues that shape your daily life, and they are the issues this election will decide.

South Africa has eight metropolitan municipalities that handle all local government duties in major urban centres. Covering all of them properly is impossible. We chose Johannesburg, Cape Town and eThekwini because they are the biggest three.

Read: Local government elections and the state of our municipalities

Johannesburg, with over four million people, is the country’s undisputed economic heart. Cape Town and eThekwini represent the legislative capital and the largest port city respectively.

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Coalitions

Coalition politics will feature prominently in these elections. Some polls suggest no party will win an outright majority in any major metro. Coalitions are no longer the exception; they are the default. For investors, this matters enormously.

Coalitions are inherently unstable: they fracture, collapse and change mayors mid-term. That instability creates political uncertainty over budgets, policy direction and infrastructure projects. Business wants certainty and predictability. Without it, investment dries up and the economy suffers.

This podcast will interrogate how mayoral candidates plan to navigate coalition politics and offer the stability investors and residents need.

In the episodes ahead, we will sit down with mayoral candidates from the ANC, DA, EFF, ActionSA, MK and the Patriotic Alliance. This is not soft political chat. Every candidate will face serious questioning on their manifestos, their coalition strategies, their concrete plans to deliver services, fix municipal infrastructure, and create much-needed jobs.

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Read:
The fight for Joburg: Votes, coalitions and kingmakers
Cape Town still leads the jobs race – what eThekwini can learn

Voters are confronted with dozens of pages of party policy, jargon, and the question of who can actually deliver services. This podcast is turning manifestos into a choice that ordinary people can understand. What a candidate says, what they promise, what they have done before – that information should reach voters in its most digestible form.

This is a make-or-break election. If our cities don’t work, South Africa cannot grow. This podcast does not tell you how to vote. We simply try to ensure that when you walk into that voting station on 4 November, the ballot you cast is based on clarity, not noise.

About Ray Mahlaka

Ray Mahlaka is a financial journalist at Moneyweb. His work focuses on the intersection of political dynamics, public policy and national economics, with deep coverage extending across state-owned enterprises and capital markets. He has built a sustained body of work tracking municipal financial sustainability, infrastructure investment and urban governance. On The Ballot Sheet, he brings a financial journalist’s instinct for interrogation, testing whether every mayoral candidate’s promises can survive contact with a budget and an implementation plan.

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