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South Africans vote today. Norsira co-founder Sean McLaughlin has run every metro and 213 local councils through a scenario model and tells Chris Steyn only about 45 look safe, with MK's first nationwide local test the great unknown - he expects it down in rural KwaZulu-Natal and in the metros. Legal scholar Dr Martin van Staden says the real problem is how much power sits in Pretoria, and that elites with skin in the status quo fear change. The DA's Cilliers Brink tells Alec Hogg the Tshwane polls understate him. Plus Nelson Mandela Bay's R28bn hole, and Apple dragging the Dow.

On the eve of the local elections, Dr Martin van Staden argued that South Africa's real problem was not who ran its towns, but how much power sat in Pretoria. Freshly appointed to build AfriForum's new Institute for Federalism, the legal scholar told Alec Hogg that communities were already doing the state's job, from policing to diplomacy, and that Citrusdal's farmers could not afford to wait five years for a better vote after Washington's Agoa decision. He accused the DA, IFP and Freedom Front Plus of believing in federalism only "on a sunny day", made the uncomfortable case that failing municipalities should feel the consequences of how they vote, and answered the charge that community federalism is ethnic separatism by another name.

On the eve of the vote, Norsira co-founder Sean McLaughlin told BizNews his firm had run every metro and local council through its scenario model, and found fewer than a quarter of them safe. He walked through how Durban could end up with a DA mayor backed by the ANC and IFP, why Joburg's DA surge might still land in opposition, and where MK could carve deep into the ANC's base in southern Mpumalanga. He also flagged the quieter contests, from Makhanda's collapse to Beaufort West's lesson for Gayton McKenzie, and the IFP's run of by-election wins that made it his dark horse.

Long suffering residents in South Africa's big metros are desperate for new administrations to bring back proper service delivery. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the mayoral candidate for the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) Lance Grootboom tells Chris Steyn: “Nothing is working…the state of Nelson Mandela Bay is not looking good. It needs change. It needs stability. And if that doesn't happen on the fourth of November, I think Nelson Mandela Bay is heading for trouble.” Grootboom describes the achievements of his party when it was in coalition rule twice, but says “since we were removed in May of 2023, everything went backwards in the city and we are sitting now where we are with money in the bank that is only for thirty-five days and can't pay our suppliers.” He blames the instability of the current coalition on the leading party, the African National Congress (ANC), but is confident that a new administration can turn the city around. “We did it with the same staff that the ANC gave us. It's people that were employed over the years by the ANC. We used those same people, provided leadership to them, and you saw the delivery. The same people are now there, but they are unable to deliver under the ANC government.”

A day before the vote, Cilliers Brink said the polls that put him well short of a majority in Tshwane had it wrong, or at least not yet right. The former mayor, removed two years earlier, told Alec Hogg that squeezed smaller parties and a weakened ANC election machine could still hand the DA an outright win. He laid the Bronkhorstspruit water crisis at the door of mayor Nasiphi Moya and the ANC-held portfolios in her mayoral committee, explained why he would bring private operators into water, electricity and waste collection without going the formal PPP route, and said the goodwill behind DA-ANC co-operation nationally did not extend to the metros. Then Alec asked him to sell his vision to a Mamelodi resident who had gone a week without water.