Nquthu, in KwaZulu-Natal's uMzinyathi District, returned a hung council in August 2016. Over the following seven months the council failed seven times to elect a speaker, a mayor or an executive committee, while rival councillors litigated. The December 2016 sitting ended in a bomb scare; the February 2017 sitting in death threats against councillors. With no council, no executive and no acting municipal manager, and with uMzinyathi District unable to constitute its own council because Nquthu could not appoint its representatives, MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube dissolved the municipality under s139(1)(c) on 9 February 2017, effective 23 February.
TimesLIVE reported from the town in March 2017: residents paying water-tanker drivers daily fees, refuse uncollected, offices closed. A by-election on 25 May 2017 returned an IFP majority. The case is recorded as the archive's clearest example of a municipality that ceased to exist as an institution for want of a vote, in a district already marked by political killings.