Tooks.

Five hung metros. One majority. Zero comfort. The IEC numbers tell you who can sit at the table. The politics tells you who gets to stay there. JOHANNESBURG - 270 seats. Majority: 136. DA 98. ANC 53. ActionSA 44. DA + ActionSA = 142. Four-seat cushion. That is not a coalition. That is a hostage situation with a whips' office. One floor-crossing, one resignation, one sick day - and the council flips. The ANC waits in the wings. Not because it has the numbers. Because instability is the only strategy left that still works. TSHWANE 214 seats. Majority: 108. DA 74. ActionSA 47. ANC 43. ActionSA is not kingmaker here. It is the only king. The ANC cannot govern without them. The DA cannot govern without them. Every portfolio, every deputy mayor, every committee chair goes through ActionSA's hands first. The question is not whether ActionSA gets leverage. It is whether it can spend the leverage without collapsing the thing it just won. EKURHULENI 224 seats. Majority: 113. DA 71. ANC 48. ActionSA 42. DA + ActionSA = 113. Exactly on the line. No cushion. No margin. No forgiveness. This is the most fragile coalition in the country. If it forms, it does so on borrowed time. If it fails, the ANC defaults through smaller parties not because the ANC has the votes, but because everyone else runs out of options first. ETHEKWINI 223 seats. Majority: 112. MK 90. DA 54. ANC 38. MK needs 22. The ANC has 38. The math is obvious. The politics is ugly. MK was born as a split from the ANC. Governing with the parent party in its own backyard is not alliance. It is surrender dressed as pragmatism. The alternative MK + DA at 144 is mathematically dominant and politically absurd. Unless the numbers force it. And the numbers always force things eventually. NELSON MANDELA BAY 120 seats. Majority: 61. DA 53. Eight seats. That is all that stands between majority rule and another round of scrambling. EFF. ACDP. Whoever has the seats. This one gets resolved first because it is the easiest math in the country. MANGAUNG 101 seats. Majority: 51. ANC 36. DA 33. Fifteen seats either way. Thirty-two seats floating in the hands of smaller parties. This is where the ANC's national dominance means nothing. The local machine either holds or it doesn't. And if it doesn't, Mangaung goes into administration. Not coalition. Not agreement. Provincial intervention. The quiet part. The ANC and DA have never formed a municipal coalition together. Not in 2024's 142 councils. Not in the 33 that followed. The GNU exists at national level. The municipal level stays silent. That silence is the whole story. Because the numbers tell you who can sit at the table. The politics tells you who gets to stay there. And if history is any guide, none of them do.