# The South African Council of Churches, the National Foundations Dialogue Initiative and the Women’s Election Mechanism for Peace have commended South Africans for upholding democracy and ensuring peaceful and orderly 2026 local government elections. The organisations deployed 619 trained and accredited election observers across all nine provinces to monitor the opening, voting, closing and counting processes. The observer mission also welcomed an improvement in voter participation, which increased from 12.3-million in the 2021 local government elections to 15.9-million in 2026.
Election observer mission commends South Africans for peaceful local government elections