ActionSA

Municipalities should keep the right to buy electricity from private power companies as well as from Eskom.

The 2026 manifesto commits to diversify municipal electricity supply where legally and financially possible and to pursue competitively priced electricity from alternative producers. The 2021 manifesto also promised procurement from independent power producers.

Unpaid household electricity debts should be collected, not cancelled.

The 2026 manifesto separates households that cannot pay, who get support, from those who have the means but refuse, who face firm credit control, and offers no general write-off.

Eskom's older coal power stations should close on their planned dates.

ActionSA's 2024 manifesto backs a gradual, responsibly managed shift from fossil fuels to renewables under a Just Transition framework with reskilling for coal workers. Its 2023 approved policies add that failing to use existing infrastructure and natural resources would cause unaffordable losses, while still targeting a rapid renewables build before 2030.

The state should give a free house to every household that cannot afford to buy one, not only the poorest.

The approved policies call low-density RDP housing ineffective and shift the state's role to affordable housing near jobs, high-rise public housing, cheaper bonds and serviced stands, keeping free houses for the poorest only. That is the disagree position as the statement is now worded.

In some cases the state should be able to take land for housing or public use without paying the owner.

ActionSA opposes expropriation without compensation. Its 23 January 2025 statement on the Expropriation Act says the party opposes any constitutional amendment permitting expropriation without compensation and upholds private property rights, and the 2020 land blueprint rejects amending section 25.

Provinces should be allowed to run their own police services that can investigate crime, alongside the national police.

ActionSA wants more policing functions decentralised to competent provincial police departments and more municipal law-enforcement officers, but it frames this as decentralising functions from SAPS, not creating full provincial or metro police services. The 2026 manifesto says municipalities will work with SAPS where they lack the powers.

The death penalty should be brought back for murder.

ActionSA's Senate resolved in August 2023 that the party will not support bringing back the death penalty and will instead push for life sentences that mean life. At the party's policy conference in September 2023 Herman Mashaba accepted the decision and said the death penalty would disproportionately prejudice the poor.

Only South African citizens and permanent residents should be allowed to own spaza shops and other small township businesses.

ActionSA is promoting a Reserved Sectors Bill and its #Spaza4Locals campaign to end foreign ownership of spaza shops and secure these businesses for South Africans. Its Tshwane administration adopted an informal trading by-law that prioritises South Africans.

Foreign nationals without legal status should get only emergency care at public clinics and hospitals.

ActionSA says access to public healthcare has been wrongly extended to illegal foreign nationals through a misreading of section 27 and wants the Constitution rebalanced to put South Africans first while keeping basic humanitarian duties. Its MP Kgosi Letlape said no country opens non-emergency care to everyone and that foreigners who use public facilities should pay.

Labour laws should make it easier for businesses to hire and dismiss workers.

The 2024 manifesto commits to reforming the Basic Conditions of Employment Act to reduce the burden on employers when dismissing non-performing staff, to make hiring easier, and to exempt new small businesses from restrictive labour requirements for two years. The 2023 policies would exempt new SMMEs from bargaining council agreements and cut union power over policy.

Municipalities should employ their security guards, cleaners and other contract workers directly, rather than through contractors.

ActionSA says it unequivocally supports insourcing security guards and cleaners, and the 2026 manifesto commits to insourcing appropriate functions where practical and financially sustainable. The party attaches a feasibility test, but its stated direction is to employ these workers directly.

Unemployed adults should get a basic income grant well above the current R370 a month.

ActionSA proposes a universal basic income stimulus of R790, R1,101 and R1,622 a month over three years for all adult citizens and permanent residents who register, subject to financing mechanisms still to be adopted. The amounts are well above R370 but the scheme runs for three years rather than permanently, so it sits between the two sides.

People earning more than about R1.9 million a year should pay more tax than they do now.

The approved policies say government revenue must grow by expanding the economy and the number of taxpayers, not by raising tax rates on those already paying, and the 2024 manifesto proposes no income tax increase, relying on growth and a company levy instead.

When awarding tenders, municipalities should keep giving extra points to black-owned businesses.

ActionSA wants preferential procurement regulations reformed to focus solely on efficient service delivery criteria, and wants B-BBEE replaced by an Opportunity Fund. The 2023 policies say procurement should not be used for empowerment mechanisms, and the 2026 manifesto commits to competition and value for money in municipal tenders.

Party leaders outside the council should have a say in who gets senior municipal jobs such as municipal manager.

The 2023 approved policies propose amending the Municipal Systems and Structures Acts so that senior officials are appointed by independent appointment boards, to remove political interference. The 2026 manifesto says politicians will set policy but not interfere in appointments, and ends cadre deployment.

A party should need at least 1% of the vote to get a seat on a council.

At the August 2023 National Dialogue on coalitions ActionSA proposed that a 1% electoral threshold be considered, to reduce the number of parties in coalitions without shutting out minorities. Its chairperson told the Sunday Times the party backed the idea because councils with many single-seat parties are unstable.

The Western Cape should hold a referendum on whether to become an independent country.

In February 2024 ActionSA refused to sit in the Multi-Party Charter with the Referendum Party, which exists to secure a vote on Cape independence, and called Western Cape secession constitutionally offensive. It said it would sooner leave the Charter than be linked to the Cape independence movement.

The National Health Insurance (NHI) scheme should go ahead.

The 2024 manifesto opposes implementation of the NHI Bill in its current form, the 2023 policies call the NHI ill-conceived, and in February 2026 the party said it will keep opposing a framework that concentrates power in a single fund without clear financing.

The school's governing body should have the final say on the language the school teaches in.

ActionSA opposed the BELA Bill's clauses giving the Basic Education Minister and provincial departments the final say over school language and admissions, and said school governing bodies should retain control over language policy.

Public universities and colleges should be free for all students, not only for those from poorer homes.

ActionSA's 2024 manifesto promises fully funded bursaries for every South African student who cannot afford tuition, paid for through ten percent of its proposed Opportunity Fund and money redirected from bailouts and VIP protection, so that no academically qualifying student is excluded for lack of money. Funding stays targeted at those who cannot pay rather than free for all, although the same section describes a model that includes free and subsidised education.

The government should sell SAA, the national airline.

ActionSA's approved policies commit the party to privatising or winding down non-profitable state companies and those without a core or strategic purpose. When the Takatso sale collapsed its national chairperson said SAA is top of the list of state companies that must be sold as decisively as possible.

The mines should be brought under state ownership.

The 2023 approved policies oppose changes to the Reserve Bank's mandate and its nationalisation, and back independent power producers and privatising unprofitable state entities. Herman Mashaba's October 2020 economic statement warned against nationalisation of land, mines and central banks.

Government should end race-based measures such as BEE in jobs, contracts and benefits.

ActionSA would replace B-BBEE compliance with a levy funding an Opportunity Fund for black, coloured, Indian and Asian South Africans who remain disadvantaged, and its approved policies say the party is not blind to race and supports affirmative action measures that recognise the link between race and inequality. It would end B-BBEE as it stands but keep measures that take race into account, so it sits between the two sides.

Government should play a smaller part in the economy than it does now.

The approved policies say a competitive, market-based economy is the best route to the party's social and economic goals, with the state's job being to create the conditions for growth. State intervention is limited to preventing market failures and managing public resources.