Gareth van Onselen on the metro races that could redraw SA politics

Six days before the vote, four serious pollsters could not agree on who was winning Johannesburg. Gareth van Onselen, whose Victory Research polls have drawn fire from the ANC and ActionSA alike, told Alec Hogg why the metro numbers diverged, why turnout could swing a party by up to five points, and why the real result would only emerge from two weeks of coalition bargaining after 4 November. He set out the test he believed eThekwini would pose for every other metro, the squeeze facing the DA in Cape Town, an idea for running Gauteng's three metros as one, and the ANC strongholds that, if they cracked, would mark a change not seen since 1994. He also had a blunt verdict on Herman Mashaba's claim to Soweto, and a word on the eight weeks his own Joburg tap had run dry.