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- Desi,<\/a><\/strong> our AI chatbot<\/a>, answers your plain-English election questions<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- BallotBox<\/a>: Find candidates and how many wards they are standing in<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Find your voting station<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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\ud83c\udfe0 X factors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/JHGB-23_October_2026_OCN.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nIn local elections voters get more than one ballot paper: a ward ballot for their local \/ metro municipality and a PR ballot, and if you don\u2019t live in a metro, one for a district council. On the ward ballot you vote for a person to represent your area. On the PR ballot you vote for a party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The candidate who wins a ward gets a seat on the council, and ward winners make up half the seats. But the total number of seats each party gets is based on its share of all<\/em> the votes, ward and PR added together. Parties that won fewer wards than their share deserves are topped up with PR seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So winning a ward isn\u2019t the only way onto the council. Often it\u2019s easier to run candidates in lots of wards and pick up a few hundred votes in each. Those votes add to the party\u2019s total, and that total turns into seats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Johannesburg in 2021, neither ActionSA nor the EFF won a single ward, yet both ended up with a large block of council seats. This year, with some parties putting candidates in every one of the city\u2019s 135 wards, many seats may be won through sheer vote numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The chart shows Johannesburg\u2019s council seats. A \u201cW\u201d marks a seat held by someone who won a ward. The rest were allocated to parties based on their share of the overall vote. It shows how the EFF benefited from this system in 2016 and 2021, and ActionSA in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Cape_town_council_seats.png\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\ud83d\udca1Explore the seat allocations for all councils in our Ballot Box tool: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Explore all council seats<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
For more election analysis visit our partner The South Africa Brief<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\ud83c\udfe0 Dirty laundry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Last month we charted the state of sewage treatment in South Africa\u2019s eight metros with GroundUp<\/a>. Six of them were rated \u201cvery poor\u201d or \u201ccritical\u201d in the 2024 Green Drop audit. Tshwane\u2019s score fell from 82% in 2013 to 34%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That decline now has a human cost. Between 7 and 18 October, 408 people in and around Bronkhorstspruit fell ill, most of them children under four. Investigators traced the cases to tap water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/18_september_2026_groundup_v2__1_.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTwo kinds of plant matter here. A water treatment plant cleans river water so people can drink it. A wastewater treatment works cleans sewage before it goes back into a river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bronkhorstspruit water treatment plant draws water from the Bronkhorstspruit River. Officials say the river is badly polluted by sewage from failing works upstream in Victor Khanye municipality and from Tshwane\u2019s broken pump stations. From 24 September to 14 October, the plant had no chlorine after a supplier dispute. Residents were not warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our chart zooms in on Tshwane\u2019s own 16 sewage works. In the Department of Water and Sanitations Green Drop reports, 15 scored lower in 2024 than in 2021, and seven were considered critical. The Green Drop score of Godrich, which treats Bronkhorstspruit\u2019s sewage, fell from 61% to 30%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polluted rivers leave drinking water plants no room for error. In Bronkhorstspruit, chlorine was the last safeguard, and it was missing for three weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Water_treatment.png\")
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\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udffd\u200d\ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffd\u200d\ud83d\udc67\ud83c\udffd\u200d\ud83d\udc66\ud83c\udffd Social support<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced on Wednesday that the government will spend just under R290-billion on social grants this financial year. That\u2019s 11% of government spending, the same as 20 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/outliereditor.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/23_October_2026_GroundUp_v8.webp\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n20 years ago, when SASSA began operating, government spent R57-billion on social grants, which is the equivalent of R155.6-billion in today\u2019s money. So when taking inflation into account, spending on social grants will have grown by about 86% between 2006\/07 and 2026\/27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But as a percentage of total government spending, social grants expenditure has stayed the same at 11.2% since 2006. It was 2.8% of gross domestic product in 2006\/07 and 3.6% in 2025\/26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of people receiving grants has doubled over the past twenty years, from 12-million in 2006\/07 to about 26.2-million in 2026\/27. A quarter of South Africans received a grant then; 40% do today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the fastest periods of growth was between 2009 and 2012, when the child support grant was extended to older children. And the addition of the Covid Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, currently valued at R370 a month, added about 8-million people to the grant system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The SRD grant was intended to provide temporary assistance to people without income during the pandemic. But it has been extended multiple times, most recently on Wednesday until March 2028. It is likely to be replaced by a grant that also helps connect people to job opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- BallotBox<\/a>: Find candidates and how many wards they are standing in<\/li>\n\n\n\n
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