DURBAN, Friday 28 August 2026 — ActionSA’s recently selected KwaDukuza mayoral candidate Halalisani Ndlovu has resigned from the party and joined the Democratic Alliance, removing one of ActionSA’s leading local candidates from a strategically important KwaZulu-Natal contest just before candidate nominations closed for the November municipal elections.
The Democratic Alliance announced Ndlovu’s defection during a KwaZulu-Natal election briefing at which it also unveiled mayoral candidates for uMhlathuze and Ray Nkonyeni municipalities.
Ndlovu had recently been selected by ActionSA to lead its campaign for mayor of KwaDukuza.
He will no longer contest against the DA’s mayoral candidate, Privi Makhan, and will instead campaign alongside her for the party.
The move is significant because Ndlovu was not simply an ordinary ActionSA member.
He is a sitting KwaDukuza councillor who has been a prominent opposition figure in the municipality and had already been presented to voters as the party’s prospective mayor.
Ndlovu previously played a visible role in opposition scrutiny of the ANC administration, including disputes surrounding expenditure by the municipality’s political leadership.
His departure therefore removes an experienced local representative from ActionSA while giving the DA a figure with existing municipal and campaign experience.
DA national campaign manager Ashor Sarupen said Ndlovu concluded that splitting opposition support in KwaDukuza could assist the ANC or strengthen the prospects of the EFF and MK Party.
The DA presented his decision as part of its attempt to consolidate opposition support behind a single larger challenger.
That interpretation represents the DA and Ndlovu’s stated political reasoning for the move rather than an independent assessment of how voters will respond.
KwaDukuza is an increasingly competitive municipality on KwaZulu-Natal’s North Coast and includes Stanger, Ballito, Salt Rock and surrounding communities.
The ANC won 29 seats in the 59-seat council in 2021, leaving it one seat short of an outright majority and dependent on support from smaller parties to maintain control.
The DA held nine seats, while ActionSA held five.
Subsequent electoral developments have made the municipality still more competitive.
In an April 2025 by-election in Ward 28, the MK Party took a ward from the ANC with 62% of the vote.
The result reduced the ANC to 28 seats and gave MK its first seat in the council.
The same ward also illustrated how sharply the political landscape had changed since the previous municipal election.
Daily Maverick’s analysis found that the ANC had won 76% in the ward in 2021 but fell to 33% in the by-election, while MK established itself as the dominant party there.
That makes KwaDukuza important beyond Ndlovu’s individual move.
The municipality sits immediately north of eThekwini in a province where the emergence of MK has fundamentally changed competition between the ANC, IFP, DA and smaller parties since the 2024 national and provincial elections.
A fragmented result in November could leave several parties capable of influencing the formation of the next municipal government.
Ndlovu’s defection consequently changes both ActionSA’s candidate structure and the opposition configuration shortly before the election.
For ActionSA, the immediate consequence is the loss of the person it had chosen to front its campaign for control of the municipality.
For the DA, Ndlovu adds an experienced councillor to a campaign already being led by Makhan rather than creating a competing mayoral bid.
The timing could also create questions around candidate lists.
Political parties and independent candidates faced a hard deadline of 17:00 on Friday, 28 August to submit nominations to the Electoral Commission of South Africa for the 4 November local government elections.
IEC chief electoral officer Sy Mamabolo said no ordinary amendments would be permitted after the deadline and ruled out extending the election timetable except in exceptional circumstances such as judicial intervention or a threat to free and fair elections.
Whether Ndlovu appears on the DA’s submitted candidate list will therefore depend on whether the party completed the necessary nomination process before Friday’s deadline.
The reporting reviewed for this article does not establish his final position on the DA’s submitted list, and his defection should not be interpreted as confirmation that he will necessarily appear on the ballot as a DA candidate.
The DA simultaneously named Rob Bentele as its mayoral candidate for uMhlathuze and Leon Garbade for Ray Nkonyeni.
Bentele is a community activist without previous government experience, while Garbade is an experienced councillor and businessman.
Those selections form part of a broader DA push in KwaZulu-Natal municipalities where the party is competing not only with the ANC and IFP but with a substantially strengthened MK Party.
DA national chairperson Dean Macpherson also used the Durban briefing to rule out pre-election discussions with MK.
Macpherson said the DA was campaigning for outright victories and was not currently negotiating coalition arrangements with other parties, adding specifically that its plans did not include MK.
KwaDukuza’s numbers make an outright majority difficult for any party based on the fragmented current council, meaning coalition or support agreements could again become important after November.
Ndlovu’s move is therefore unusually consequential for a defection outside one of the eight metros: it involves a sitting councillor and announced mayoral candidate, removes ActionSA’s campaign figurehead, strengthens a direct rival and occurs in a municipality where the ANC has already lost its majority and MK has demonstrated significant electoral growth.
The next immediate development will be ActionSA’s response to the vacancy in its KwaDukuza campaign leadership and confirmation of the candidate lists submitted to the IEC.
The commission will now verify nominations before publishing the final lists of candidates on 16 September, providing the first definitive indication of whether Ndlovu’s late switch also translated into a place on the DA’s ballot.
