This article assesses the performance of coalition governments in the metropolitan cities of Ekurhuleni, Johannesburg and Tshwane from 2016 to 2021. Coalition governments are constitutionally possible and are further anchored by a proportional representation system of elections. The 2016 local government elections yielded 27 hung municipalities nationally. This signalled an unprecedented loss of all three Gauteng-based metros by the African National Congress (ANC) and with it, a possible decline of its dominance since the dawn of democracy in 1994. Although South Africa experienced 97 coalitions before 2016, there is a paucity of research on the performance of coalitions at municipal level, hence the need to assess the performance of the coalitions in the selected metros. A discourse analysis within a qualitative design methodology was used to assess the metros by means of documentary analysis, interpretive analysis of events linked