ANC

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

The 2026 manifesto counts the legal reform that lets municipalities buy power directly as an ANC achievement and promises wheeling tariffs, embedded generation and municipal self-generation. The party's 2022 conference resolved that municipalities should be enabled to partner with independent power producers.

Unpaid household electricity debts should be collected, not cancelled.

The 2026 manifesto says municipalities will collect what households owe while protecting those who genuinely cannot pay through the indigent register, and the January 2026 statement calls on all electricity users to pay. That is collecting the debts, with targeted relief for the poorest, rather than writing them off.

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

The ANC's National Executive Committee said in April 2023 that the decommissioning schedule for coal stations needs to be revisited to balance energy security with the party's climate commitments, and in the same statement called for an accelerated programme to bring renewables into the mix. Its conference resolutions and 2024 manifesto back an energy mix that keeps coal alongside renewables, gas and nuclear under a just transition.

Where a municipality cannot keep the water running, it should hire a private company to run its water system.

The 2026 manifesto says municipalities must keep the capacity and responsibility to deliver essential services and that partnerships can add capacity but cannot replace it. Private investment in water is welcomed, but handing the running of a water system to a private company is not.

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

The ANC's housing programme gives free houses to the poorest and offers serviced land or finance to households above the limit, which is the opposite of a free house for every household that cannot afford to buy.

The law should make it quicker to remove people who have recently moved onto land without permission.

The 2026 manifesto says unlawful occupation must be handled through law enforcement and the courts, with referral and support for homeless people affected. The ANC minister's 2026 PIE Amendment Bill (a different bill from the DA's 2023 one) keeps the court order requirement and the duty to offer alternative accommodation while adding fines for people who organise land invasions, so the party is not proposing quicker removals.

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

ANC conference policy says expropriation without compensation should be one of the main tools for land reform. The party voted for the Expropriation Act, which allows nil compensation in some cases, welcomed its signing, and its deputy president told Parliament in November 2025 that expropriation without compensation is happening where it is in the public interest.

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

Ramaphosa, as President and ANC leader, told Parliament in a written reply that the Constitution provides for a single police service, that transferring policing to provinces would be invalid, and that government has no such policy. The 2026 manifesto says policing remains mainly a SAPS responsibility, with municipal police strengthened where they already exist.

The death penalty should be brought back for murder.

ANC leaders have repeatedly rejected bringing back the death penalty. Paul Mashatile, then treasurer-general and now deputy president, called it a cruel system that takes innocent lives, and the ANC parliamentary caucus in 2019 rejected calls for it as populist.

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

The 2026 manifesto says municipal programmes, procurement and trading spaces must prioritise South African workers and businesses, and that immigration and trading permit laws must be enforced. ANC leaders have called for enforcement against spaza shops run by undocumented foreigners, but the party has not called for a citizens-only rule.

Yearly increases to the national minimum wage should be no more than about the rate of inflation.

The 2024 manifesto commits to raising the national minimum wage in line with inflation, and the 2026 manifesto ties public employment wages to cost-of-living adjustments. An inflation-linked rise is not a rise much faster than inflation.

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

Ramaphosa wrote in May 2025 that growth and job creation do not require giving up worker protections and that the labour laws exist to overcome apartheid inequality, answering calls to loosen them. ANC manifestos treat casualisation and labour broking as problems to legislate against, but no document speaks directly to making hiring and firing easier.

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

The 2026 manifesto commits every ANC-led municipality to review outsourced cleaning, security and similar services within two years with rebuilding in-house delivery as the stated direction, and the 2021 manifesto promised to insource functions municipalities can do better and to end labour broking. That supports employing these workers directly rather than through contractors.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to progressively implementing a basic income support grant for the unemployed by extending the SRD grant and improving its value and coverage, and the party said in May 2024 that the SRD would be the basis for a permanent basic income payment. That is a commitment to a larger grant, though no amount is given.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to raising additional revenue through progressive tax reforms, and the 2022 national conference resolved to explore a wealth tax to reduce inequality. Both point to people at the top paying more than they do now, though neither names a rate or an income threshold.

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

The ANC's 2022 conference resolved that government and all its entities must keep implementing preferential procurement for people disadvantaged by unfair discrimination. The 2026 manifesto adds municipal procurement targets for women, youth and disability-owned firms and priority for South African businesses.

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

In March 2025, after the party's national working committee visited the Free State, the ANC's secretary-general said a skills audit of all senior municipal managers in the province was under way to ensure competent people occupy key municipal positions, and that only those who can effectively deliver services will be retained or appointed; in February 2024 he said the party's deployment committee identifies people whose skills fit posts and encourages them to apply. The 2026 manifesto wants senior posts filled on merit and officials protected from improper political interference.

Parties should be required by law to make women at least half of their candidates.

The ANC applies its own 50/50 rule and, in June 2026, an ANC MP told the parliamentary women's caucus that the party is advancing a private member's bill to require equal representation of women across all political parties.

Provincial governments should be scrapped, with their work handed to national government and municipalities.

ANC conference resolutions call for provinces to be reformed, reduced and strengthened, with a commission on their role, number and boundaries, and the 2022 conference asked for a cost-benefit analysis of the spheres of government and listed the need for a provincial sphere as a question still to be settled. The manifestos keep provinces inside the district development model, so the position sits between keeping them as they are and scrapping them.

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

Ramaphosa, in a written parliamentary reply, said South Africa is one sovereign democratic state and that he has no intention of considering or holding a referendum on the secession of any part of the country.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to implementing the NHI, the overwhelming majority of ANC MPs voted for the NHI Bill in June 2023, and the party restated its support for the Act in August 2024 and vowed to defend it in court.

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

The ANC's parliamentary study group urged full commencement of the BELA Act and said governing bodies keep language policy powers only subject to the provincial head of department's approval. The secretary-general also insisted on full implementation of the language clause.

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

The ANC's 2022 national conference resolutions describe the party's current policy as free higher education for the poor and the missing middle, and instruct a subcommittee to review that policy against the party's older ideal of free education for all. The 2024 and 2026 manifestos take no position beyond widening post-school access and redirecting NSFAS subsidy spending into student housing, while an August 2024 NEC Lekgotla resolved to finalise the student funding model and fund the missing middle.

The government should sell SAA, the national airline.

The ANC's 2022 conference resolved that decisions to increase or reduce public ownership of state companies are made case by case on the balance of evidence, and party figures have said since the collapse of the SAA sale that privatisation is not ANC policy while the state looks for a private partner with the state keeping control. That is a partial-sale position, neither a sale of control nor a refusal to sell.

The mines should be brought under state ownership.

The ANC's 2012 Mangaung conference resolved on state intervention in the minerals sector through a strengthened state mining company, a share of mineral rents captured through the tax system and increased state ownership only where appropriate on the balance of evidence, and it has not proposed nationalising the mines since. That is a position against bringing the mines under state ownership.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to keep promoting employment equity so that black people, women and persons with disabilities are represented across the economy, and to expand the black industrialist programme. The 2022 conference resolved to intensify black economic empowerment and preferential procurement for people disadvantaged by unfair discrimination.

The courts should keep the power to cancel a law that breaks the Constitution.

In May 2026 the ANC said it respects the Constitutional Court's judgment and the supremacy of the Constitution, and that it is committed to constitutional democracy and the rule of law. That is the opposite of Parliament passing laws the courts cannot overturn.

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

The 2024 manifesto says market dynamics must be balanced with state intervention and that a capable developmental state is critical, with industrial policy and public procurement used to steer the economy. The January 2026 statement repeats that private investment should be enabled while the state keeps strategic ownership and regulatory control.