eThekwini Ratepayers Political Movement's (ERPM), Asad Gaffar and Rose Cortes.
The two proportional representation (PR) seats secured by the eThekwini Ratepayers Political Movement (ERPM) will be occupied by the party's chairperson Asad Gaffar and Rose Cortes.
ERPM garnered 12,415 votes after contesting 41 wards and just fell short of winning a Ward seat.
The party transitioned from a civic organisation tackling water outages and billing disputes, to a political party earlier this year.
It had spent three years boycotting rates and suing the municipality over the lack of basic services.
ERPM outperformed several established parties despite a shoestring budget, entering a metro where no single party reached the 112-seat majority.
The party finished ahead of several longstanding parties such as the Patriotic Alliance (1 seat), Minority Front (1 seat), and ACDP (1 seat) while tying with the Freedom Front Plus and African Transformation Movement at two seats each.
Cortes said the two PR seats would be occupied by her and Gaffar.
"We are ordinary people with ordinary jobs. Gaffar is in sales and I manage a small property portfolio. We have both served ratepayer interests in voluntary ways through the Westville ratepayers association and the EThekwini Ratepayers Protest Movement," she said.
"It became very clear that unless we took our activism into the political arena, meaningful participation would not be possible," she said.
She said they did not have big promises for their first 100 days in the office.
"Our commitment remains to be in service of the best interests of the citizenry of our metro. Our priorities are ensuring solid governance, budget alignment and scrutiny, accountability, and equitable service delivery," said Cortes.
She said there was much work to be done.
Alex Van Den Heever, a political analyst from Wits University, said civic organisations now turned political parties was an interesting development in local government electoral politics and community representation.
"A ratepayers association moving into formal politics could create a more direct relationship between a community and its council representatives. In principle, I do not see a problem with this. The real test will be what happens now that the organisation has representation in the council," he said.
He said ERPM's success depends on whether those councillors remain closely connected to the communities they represent, whether they improve accountability and transparency, and whether they can influence practical issues such as service delivery and municipal finances.
"There is also an important transition issue. A civic organisation can hold all political parties to account, while a political party has to make choices in council, including possible coalition arrangements. The challenge will be to retain the community-based character of the organisation while operating effectively within formal politics. It will be very interesting to see how this experiment pans out," he said.
Another political analyst from Wits University Dr Thabani Chilenga-Butao, said ERPM's success would include the movement being able to hold eThekwini accountable for revenue collection and how that revenue is allocated and spent.
"The movement began precisely because they were frustrated with how their rates were not being used for service delivery. So that will be a measure of success," said Chilenga-Butao.
He added that a second measure of success will be whether the movement can affect and improve service delivery by demanding accountability for how rates are spent.