ActionSA defies pre-election polls to secure crucial coalition role

ActionSA KwaZulu-Natal leader Zwakele Mncwango says they are open to talks with any party in coalition negotiations.

ActionSA's KwaZulu-Natal leader, Zwakele Mncwango, has questioned the credibility of pre-election opinion polls, accusing some pollsters of failing to accurately predict the party's performance in the recent local government elections.

"Not a single poll got it right about us. The Ipsos poll predicted an increase of no more than 1.5 percentage points in our support, yet here we are with an increase of more than three percentage points. Some media houses consistently used the DA's own polls to predict election outcomes. What kind of journalism is that when you rely on a political party's polls to predict the outcome of an election? They openly ran a DA campaign, did not verify the polls and did not even question them. This is what we had to deal with, but we kept going," Mncwango told IOL.

ActionSA has more than doubled its national vote share since the 2021 municipal elections, recording an increase of approximately 3.25 percentage points — representing growth of nearly 140% in its share of the vote. The increase exceeded the growth suggested by the final Ipsos pre-election poll, which placed ActionSA's national support at approximately 4%.

The party's stronger-than-expected performance has positioned it as a potentially influential player in coalition negotiations over the future governance of Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and possibly eThekwini. In the hotly contested Johannesburg metro, the battle for political control saw the DA's Helen Zille and ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba emerge as prominent mayoral contenders. While Zille's DA has secured a substantial lead over ActionSA, it falls short of the outright majority required to govern alone. According to provisional results, the DA has secured 35.98% of the Johannesburg vote, compared with ActionSA's 16.2%.

However, in a conciliatory gesture, Zille has indicated that her party would be open to working with ActionSA. Mashaba had previously ruled out entering into a coalition with the DA, but that position now appears to have softened. "We are open to talks with any party and will discuss our terms once we sit down with them, including the DA. There has been no formal approach so far, but we will wait and see what happens in the coming days," Mncwango said.

Despite failing in his bid to become eThekwini's mayor, Mncwango remained upbeat about his party's electoral performance, insisting that ActionSA's steady growth demonstrated its increasing political support.

"No, I'm not disappointed at all. We are a growing party. We've more than doubled our support and we did not decline, which shows that we are consistent in our growth. We are steadily growing, and that's good news," he added.

The party's electoral gains come as coalition negotiations begin in several hung municipalities, where the balance of power could ultimately depend on agreements between parties that fiercely contested the elections. For ActionSA, the coming days will test whether its increased electoral support can translate into a meaningful role in governing some of the country's largest metropolitan municipalities.