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Newsbrief

Johannesburg Mayor Morero casts special vote, backs ANC support

Published

Ongoing: Elections Hot

Empty school hall with plain wooden voting booths lined up along a wall.

Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero voted at Laerskool Roodekraans on the West Rand on Tuesday and said he was confident the ANC would keep its support. He made the remark despite service delivery problems in the city.

Morero cast his special vote in the local government elections and said he voted for the African National Congress (ANC). Over 2 million voters registered for special votes in the elections.

He said the ANC had done a lot of campaigning work in the last 18 months and that its support base remained strong. He said the last three weeks had been tough.

Asked about water and waste problems in Johannesburg, Morero said some systems in Soweto had recovered. He said this showed the interventions and work under way.

Key facts

Who
Dada Morero (Johannesburg Mayor); African National Congress (party Morero said he voted for and appealed to voters to support)
What
Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero voted during special voting for the local government elections at Laerskool Roodekraans on the West Rand, and said he was confident the ANC would keep its support despite service delivery problems in the city.
When
3 November 2026
Where
West Rand, Johannesburg, Soweto
Status
Reported

Elections Hot

What you need to know

Voting in the 2026 Local Government Elections is under way at 23,696 stations, and the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) reported a smooth start on 4 November. Stations opened at 7am and close at 9pm, and by 10am preliminary figures showed 3,523,691 voters had cast ballots.

There were problems: unused ballot papers were stolen from Mnyameni Secondary School near Durban, police opened a case, and the IEC relieved the station staff of duty. Some voters in Tshwane said they were turned away for wearing party shirts, but the IEC denied this and said only mayoral candidates' entourages were barred.

ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe told members not to query the results or discredit the IEC, while the IEC said false online claims show routine procedures as fraud.

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US mid-terms Heating up

What you need to know

Democrats won back both the US House and Senate in the midterm elections held on 3 November, according to media projections. Exit polls showed voters were angry about high prices and the direction of the country, and rebuked President Donald Trump.

Before the vote, US forces struck targets on Qeshm Island in Iran, while Republicans struggled to defend the war against Iran on the campaign trail. Iranian officials said US voters rejected the war, and Tehran stayed on high alert for possible new US strikes.

Markets reacted, with the dollar hitting a one-month low and the rand firming to around R16.55, as analysts pointed to fears of gridlock in Washington.

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AI Cooling

What you need to know

Nvidia has told its cloud computing clients to sell at least 51% of their services to non-Chinese companies, according to five people with knowledge of the matter. Anthropic said it has committed to spend close to $900bn on AI infrastructure, and that its computing costs are rising faster than its revenues.

Elsewhere, reports from unnamed sources say OpenAI's latest funding round is falling short of expectations, and a judge let the NAACP pollution case against xAI proceed. In South Africa, the VAST AI investment scheme went offline on 30 October after withdrawals marked approved did not arrive, according to a news investigation.

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