Talk:2011 South African municipal elections

Year change
Changed the year of the municipality elections from 2012 to 2011. The South African constitution para 159. "Terms of Municipal Councils" states: "1. The term of a Municipal Council may be no more than five years, as determined by national legislation. 2. If a Municipal Council is dissolved in terms of national legislation, or when its term expires, an election must be held within 90 days of the date that Council was dissolved or its term expired. " As the present municipal councils were elected in March 2006, the next elections will therefore take place sometime between March and June 2011. The reason why someone on Wikipedia initially "scheduled" the elections for 2012 must be that the the previous elections before 2006 were held in 2000. However, these were held 5 december,the 2006 elections were held 1 March, meaning that the 2006 elections were held within the maximum 5 years and 90 days mandated by the SA constitution.Kjetor (talk) 10:26, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Some source for new info
ANC set to lose ground in South Africa vote - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 08:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

IEC website
It seems the IEC's website is once again usable. It was so severely overloaded yesterday that all my attempted lookups timed out. Roger (talk) 11:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Boycott section
Is it really necessary to have twelve cites to support only three sentences? IMHO it's excessive. Roger (talk) 12:52, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
 * It's now getting a little ridiculous, with eleven references for one sentence. - htonl (talk) 19:26, 22 May 2011 (UTC)


 * That is unfortunately the way some editors with a certain "angle" do things. You should see how for example the Abahlali baseMjondolo article is overstuffed with references. It seems they believe more refs makes something more "right". The more extreme loony-left wingnut professors they can cite the happier they become. Roger (talk) 10:59, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I've trimmed back the cites by removing the self published "propaganda" sources and consolidated multiple cites into one footnote. See WP:CITECLUTTER. Roger (talk) 11:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

How effective were the boycotts anyway? The overall polling percentage is the highest it's ever been but I don't know if it was effective in some localities. Roger (talk) 10:59, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Map and table colours
I think we should try to use the same colours on the maps and the tables. The maps distinguish very nicely between majority and plurality but the tables don't and the maps show the different ties well too. Having the same key for all the maps and tables would also make it easier and neater. Roger (talk) 13:02, 22 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd be very happy to give it a go. The reason I didn't do it is that, for the tables, you have to use a very light colour so that the text is still readable, and that makes it impossible to have the majority/plurality dark/light distinction that the maps do. But one could change the text colour and it might work. I'll try it with one of the provinces and see how it goes. - htonl (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2011 (UTC)


 * So you can see what it looks like in the KwaZulu-Natal table. - htonl (talk) 19:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks great! Does the key need to be so verbose? The way it's set out in the maps works well, IMHO there's no need for an entire paragraph of prose. Roger (talk) 10:45, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The dark text on the dark green background isn't particularly readable. The seat values may be white, but the municipality name is dark. Greenman (talk) 23:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I know. That's the problem I have with it, as well, and it'll be worse if we do the Western Cape, where DA win rows will have dark blue text on a dark blue background! - htonl (talk) 02:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * So I've modified the Limpopo table to make the municipality link text lighter. I'm not sure if we should be doing all this, though, given WP:COLOR, and also WikiProject Usability/Color (although that latter page is inactive). - htonl (talk) 02:33, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * So the good idea doesn't look so good anymore. Do we revert to the light colours that we started with? It is probably best to keep the multi-colours for only the maps. Roger (talk) 07:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think the original colours, as used elsewhere, are best. Greenman (talk) 20:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

So I've reverted to the original color scheme. - htonl (talk) 21:09, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Mutale
You'll notice that the Limpopo table lists Mutale as "not yet declared". I put it that way because the IEC website doesn't yet report the seat allocation for that council - the report just says "No data available." I'm hoping that they'll update the report on Monday, once the IEC staff wake up from the long sleep that they're no doubt taking! Of course one can safely assume that it's an ANC win. - htonl (talk) 18:09, 22 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I found this news article about a coin toss being used as a tie-breaker between an ANC and an Independent candidate for one of the ward seats The article is dated Saturday so the official result will probably be out soon. Roger (talk) 12:31, 23 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Interesting! It looks like it was Ward 3, where they each got 823 votes. - htonl (talk) 14:13, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

District municipalities
We have no information here about district council elections. Roger (talk) 11:55, 25 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The district councils can't be elected until the local municipalities have been constituted and met for the first time to elect their representatives on the district councils. I understand the lists of elected councillors are only going to be published in the Gazette today, and then IIRC the local councils have two weeks to elect district representatives. We could talk about the results of the DC40% vote, and there are some districts in which it's obvious which party will control, but the full picture isn't available yet. - htonl (talk) 12:26, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Intros for the provicial tables
I've added brief introductory statements to the provincial sections that didn't have any. IMHO it creates a better balanced article to have such intros for all provinces, not only the "interesting" ones. Roger (talk) 09:26, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Verify table Sums
I caught quite a large error in the Gauteng table, it would be good if more eyes can once again verify the totals in all tables. It's a pity the Wikimedia software doesn't have at least basic arithmetic functions such as SUM built in. Roger (talk) 10:30, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Update the small Western Cape Map
The Western Cape map this has a question mark on Cape Town, which was won decisively by the DA. Could somebody update the map to reflect this fact? I'd do it myself if I knew how to do it but unfortunately I don't. -- 78.70.52.31 (talk) 17:44, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I removed the question mark from that map back in May. If you're still seeing it, then you definitely need to clear your browser cache. - htonl (talk) 18:57, 15 October 2011 (UTC)