Sean McLaughlin: View the coalition options in SA's municipalities

Helen Zille's campaign has taken the DA up about 10 percentage points. And for the first time ever in the history of Johannesburg, you could, in theory, form a stable government with the DA bloc. The non-liberation movements have more than 50 percent in Johannesburg. Can the DA and ActionSA find each other? That is the critical key question here. So, 34%.

16%, even that is quite thin, even that is quite narrow, and would need everybody to vote in unison. So, if they can't find each other, yeah, I don't know. Maybe they'll do some sort of confidence and supply arrangement where maybe the DA takes an opposition role and they elect an ActionSA mayor, maybe they pass budgets and so on, but they take chairmanship of committees and so on. That's also another option. So, you know, the ANC has fallen so.

Far in so much of these municipalities, specifically in the metropolitan municipalities, big cities, that it becomes very difficult for ActionSA to go to the other side. It becomes very unwieldy, very weak, and very narrow. And it changes the conversation materially. So that's Johannesburg. Staying with Gauteng, very similar story in the East Rand, in Ekuirilines.