Wouter Wessels urges voters to choose conviction over tactical loyalty. South Africa’s municipal electoral system gives that argument substance, but representation is only the first test of a party’s usefulness. A party can lose every ward it contests and still win seats on a municipal council. That is the essential fact missing from many arguments about a “wasted vote”. South Africa’s system combines directly elected ward councillors with party-list seats, allowing support spread across a municipality to produce representation even without a ward victory. The Electoral Commission’s explanation of council seats sets out how the two fit together. That gives substance to the argument made by Freedom Front Plus chairperson Wouter Wessels in his conversation with Donald Brown: voters should support a party whose principles they share, rather than assume that only a larger party can make their vote useful. His appeal is partly about political loyalty. Its strongest defence, however, lies in the electoral rules. Those rules do not settle the whole question. Choosing a ward representative, securing a voice in council and helping to sustain a workable governing majority are related decisions, with different consequences. A smaller party can be effective. A larger party can offer advantages. Neither proposition can be proved by the size of a campaign rally or the confidence of a candidate. The ward is not the whole council In a ward, the candidate with the most votes wins. That makes tactical considerations intelligible: a voter may prefer one candidate but believe another has a better chance of defeating an unwanted contender. The official guide to municipal elections , in its chapter on allocating seats, explains this first-past-the-post contest. Council representation works differently. The allocation uses votes cast for parties on the proportional ballot together with votes cast for their ward candidates. Seats already won in wards are then taken into account when determining the party’s list seats. Crucially, a vote for a losing party ward candidate can still contribute to that party’s overall allocation. Independent candidates require separate treatment in the calculation. Consider an illustrative 20-seat council with no independent winners. A party receiving 10% of the combined valid party votes could win two seats despite winning no wards. Those seats would come from its list. This is an example of the mechanism, not a prediction: actual allocations depend on the quota, remainders and the applicable rules. The IEC also distinguishes the ballots : metropolitan voters receive a ward and a proportional ballot; voters in local municipalities also receive a district-council proportional ballot. A blanket instruction to vote tactically obscures these different functions. So does an assurance that every electoral choice has the same practical effect. Loyalty needs an account of power Wessels compares political loyalty with supporting a rugby team through difficult seasons. The analogy captures a legitimate frustration: a voter should not have to abandon a political preference merely because someone calls the party small. But political loyalty carries obligations that sporting loyalty does not. Councillors exercise public power. Voters are entitled to ask what a party will do with a seat, which governing arrangements it would support and what would cause it to withdraw that support. Agreement on identity or values does not answer questions about municipal budgets, appointments or maintenance. The Freedom Front Plus’s September 2026 manifesto launch offers a useful basis for that scrutiny. Its programme includes devolving power, infrastructure maintenance, merit-based appointments and stable coalitions. It also presents its constituency as broader than Afrikaners alone, while explicitly retaining a commitment to minority communities’ language, culture and identity. These are commitments to examine, not evidence of delivery. A voter can reasonably demand named local priorities, a funding explanation and measurable deadlines. The same test should apply to the party asking for a tactical vote and the party asking for a vote of conviction. Municipal failure is real, but it is not uniform Independent evidence supports the urgency of the local-government debate. In its 2024/25 audit findings, released in June 2026 , the Auditor-General reported that only 39 municipalities achieved clean audits. It also found that 116 adopted unfunded budgets. The same findings complicate a story of universal decline. Seventy-two municipalities improved their audit outcomes compared with 2020/21, while 38 regressed. The audit office also reported better submission of financial statements and fewer disclaimed opinions. Progress in financial reporting does not establish that residents receive reliable services, but it should not disappear from the account simply because it is inconvenient to a campaign. The distinction matters. A national dia