{"id":49702,"date":"2026-11-02T09:25:33","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T07:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=49702"},"modified":"2026-11-02T09:25:33","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T07:25:33","slug":"researchers-question-leaders-visibility-ahead-sa-local-elections","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/researchers-question-leaders-visibility-ahead-sa-local-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers question leaders&#8217; visibility ahead SA local elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>As South Africa (SA) enters the final stretch of the local government election campaign, researchers are questioning the visibility of the very leaders seeking to govern communities.<\/div>\n<div>\nThey say campaigning in several areas has been dominated by national political heavyweights, with local leaders and candidates often taking a back seat.<\/div>\n<div>\nThe observation comes as parties battle for control of key municipalities, against the backdrop of persistent concerns over service delivery, municipal governance and accountability.<\/div>\n<div>\nToday, special voting gets under way, with more than 2.6 million applications approved by the Electoral Commission of SA.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":37686,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-49702","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"SA enters the final stretch of the local government election campaign","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49703,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/49702\/revisions\/49703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=49702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}