GQEBERHA, Thursday 27 August 2026 — The Democratic Alliance has replaced 10 of its 23 sitting ward councillors in Nelson Mandela Bay as it unveiled candidates for all 60 wards and set a target of gaining at least five additional wards in one of South Africa’s most closely contested metropolitan municipalities.
The party announced its full ward slate on Wednesday as political parties race to complete candidate submissions before the Electoral Commission’s 17:00 deadline on Friday, 28 August.
Of the DA’s 23 current ward councillors, 13 have been selected to contest their existing wards again while 10 will not return as candidates in those wards.
The scale of the change means almost half of the party’s current ward representation in the metro will enter the November election under new candidates.
DA Eastern Cape leader Andrew Whitfield described the changes as a deliberate renewal of the party’s local team, saying candidate selection had combined experience with new community-based representatives.
He said the DA expected to retain its existing wards and believed at least five additional wards were within reach because of changes in ward boundaries and shifts in support.
Those projections are party claims and will ultimately be tested at the polls.
DA Eastern Cape chairperson Yusuf Cassim said performance evaluations carried substantial weight in the party’s selection process.
He rejected suggestions that senior party leaders simply decided which incumbents would remain, saying candidates had competed through the party’s internal selection system.
The party’s mayoral campaign will be led by former Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Retief Odendaal.
Odendaal briefly governed the metro before losing office in a motion of no confidence and is seeking to return the DA to government after the 4 November local elections.
The candidate overhaul is particularly significant because Nelson Mandela Bay has repeatedly been decided by narrow margins and coalition negotiations.
In the 2021 local government election, the DA and ANC each secured 48 seats in the 120-seat council, with neither party able to govern alone. Official election results placed the DA and ANC at roughly 40% of the vote each.
That result left smaller parties holding the balance of power.
The ANC eventually secured the mayoralty after Eugene Johnson defeated the DA’s Nqaba Bhanga by a single vote in the inaugural council sitting.
The metro has since experienced repeated changes in political leadership and coalition arrangements, making comparatively small changes in ward results potentially important to control of the council.
The DA’s five-ward target is therefore consequential.
If the party were able to retain its existing support while adding several ward victories, it could materially improve its position in post-election coalition negotiations or reduce the number of smaller parties required to form a government.
The party will not have the field to itself.
The Patriotic Alliance has expanded its organisation across Nelson Mandela Bay and has previously identified the metro as a priority for the November election.
In the July 2025 Ward 34 by-election, the DA retained the seat with 46.56% of votes cast, while the PA significantly increased its support in a contest it has subsequently cited as evidence of its growth in parts of the city.
The ANC is also campaigning to retain control of the metro, while the EFF, smaller local parties and other national parties could again play an important role if no party achieves a majority.
The 2021 result demonstrated how finely balanced that contest can become: the DA and ANC finished with identical seat totals despite being separated by less than one percentage point in the popular vote.
Ward-boundary changes add another uncertainty to the 2026 contest.
Whitfield said the DA’s assessment of five potentially winnable additional wards partly reflects the new electoral boundaries, which have altered the composition of some constituencies.
The significance of the new DA slate will therefore depend not only on whether its replacement candidates retain existing wards but also on whether the party can translate its targeted expansion into gains in areas affected by boundary changes and increased competition from smaller parties.
Final candidate submissions close on Friday afternoon, after which the IEC will begin processing nominations ahead of publication of the final candidate lists.
The November result will show whether the DA’s unusually large turnover of incumbent ward representatives strengthens its campaign for renewed control of Nelson Mandela Bay or creates vulnerabilities in wards previously held by experienced councillors.
