EFF

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

The 2024 manifesto would cancel all existing independent power producer contracts, halt new ones and consolidate Eskom as a single public company, and the 2026 manifesto speaks only of municipal generation with Eskom and other public bodies. The limited private share it allows is in new national generation under state procurement, not municipalities buying from private producers.

Unpaid household electricity debts should be collected, not cancelled.

The 2024 manifesto promised to write off household electricity debt, but the 2026 local manifesto narrows this to indigent households, with payment arrangements and relief programmes for others. The most recent position is a partial write-off.

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

The 2024 manifesto promises to repair the existing coal fleet, adopt clean coal technology and use the country's 200 years of coal reserves with nuclear as baseload, while cancelling independent power producer contracts. A party statement of 8 November 2022 called the decommissioning of coal stations illogical and premature and said the EFF will not shut them down.

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

The 2026 manifesto commits EFF municipalities to end the outsourcing of essential infrastructure services including water and to build permanent municipal teams instead, and to strengthen municipal control over water distribution. Business partners may help build water systems only if the assets stay in public hands.

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

Free quality houses are one of the party's seven cardinal pillars, restated in the 2024 manifesto, and its Human Settlement chapter promises quality, spacious houses with at least three bedrooms to all the people. That goes beyond the current rule of free houses for the poorest only.

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

The 2026 manifesto commits to preventing unlawful evictions and providing alternative accommodation wherever relocation is needed, and in May 2025 the party opposed changes to the PIE Act that would criminalise land occupation. That is the opposite of quicker removals with a narrower accommodation duty.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to reintroducing the constitutional amendment allowing expropriation of land without compensation and to state custodianship of all land, and the 2021 local manifesto said EFF municipalities would expropriate land without compensation near city centres for housing. The 2026 manifesto commits municipalities to use expropriation powers on abandoned land and buildings.

The death penalty should be brought back for murder.

At an EFF press briefing on 5 September 2019 Malema said the party does not support the death penalty at all, that anyone proposing it must show evidence it reduces crime, and that poor people who cannot afford lawyers risk being wrongly executed.

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

In a 2021 statement against planned attacks in Soweto the EFF said foreign-run spaza shops are not an economic threat and rejected the idea that poverty is caused by foreign competition. Its 2026 manifesto supports township enterprises and informal traders with no nationality restriction, and 2026 statements reject xenophobia.

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

The Founding Manifesto commits the EFF to take up the struggles of all immigrants whether in the country legally or illegally, and lists access to health among the basic rights that must be guaranteed. The 2026 manifesto's health section commits municipalities to targeted support for vulnerable groups including migrants, and 2026 statements reject blaming migrants for state failure.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to a legislated minimum wage of R6,000 a month for all full-time workers plus higher sectoral minimums, well above the national minimum wage at the time, and a May 2026 statement says the current minimum wage is disconnected from economic reality.

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

The 2026 manifesto commits EFF municipalities to employ workers directly within 24 months to cut dependence on labour brokers and tenders, and to insource security, cleaning, waste collection and maintenance to create permanent jobs.

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

The most recent direct statements found are from 2021 and 2022: in July 2021 the party leader said the R350 grant should be made permanent and raised to a respectable amount, and in February 2022 its then deputy president said Parliament should pass a basic income grant act so that it becomes law, and that it must be a grant, not the R350 paid so far. The 2024 manifesto doubles the other named grants and adds a grant for unemployed graduates but does not mention the SRD grant, and no later statement reversing the call was found.

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

The 2024 manifesto's fiscal chapter promises a wealth tax on the ultra-rich, higher capital gains and inheritance taxes to shift the burden to the rich and corporate tax up from 28 to 32 percent, and the party's May 2025 memorandum to Treasury calls for a progressive tax on high net-worth individuals.

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

The 2026 manifesto commits municipalities to support black-owned enterprises in procurement of sporting and cultural equipment, to allocate at least 80 percent of procurement to local SMMEs, cooperatives and township enterprises, and at least 50 percent of procurement opportunities to youth-owned and women-owned businesses. The 2024 manifesto ties private participation to ownership transfer to the black majority.

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

The 2026 local manifesto commits to merit-based municipal appointments grounded in qualifications and competence, and in August 2026 the party condemned pre-election appointments of senior officials in Mangaung as cadre deployment. Both say party leaders should not pick who gets senior municipal jobs; the 2024 manifesto's plan for a new government to appoint directors-general and state boards concerns national posts and is not read against it.

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

In the committee's discussion of the draft coalition law and its 1% threshold in October 2024, the party's MP questioned the rationale for the threshold and asked that its constitutionality be checked, saying proportional representation was meant to give smaller parties a platform, while also showing interest in Denmark's 2% threshold model. She neither supported nor opposed a threshold outright, so the party sits between the two sides.

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

The 2024 manifesto's Gender chapter commits an EFF government to 50 percent women representation in all spheres including political participation, and to policies that will enforce a 50 percent gender representation across public and private sectors. The commitment is to enforced parity in political representation rather than a specific law on party candidate lists.

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

The 2024 manifesto lists as a policy innovation the reconfiguration of government into national and local spheres only, eliminating the provincial sphere so that resources go to service delivery.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to keeping South Africa's land as one unitary entity and to repealing the constitutional right to self-determination in section 235, and a February 2025 statement treated AfriForum and Solidarity's appeal for partition and secession as treasonous. The party has not addressed a referendum as such.

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

The party's most recent statements treat the NHI Act as law to be implemented: in May 2025 it said the President has no mandate to renegotiate the Act with foreign powers, and in February 2026 it criticised the government for making no visible progress towards implementing the NHI.

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

In its August 2023 statement on the BELA Bill the EFF said language and admissions policy should be centralised in the education department because school governing bodies have used language to exclude black learners, and in December 2024 it demanded that the Act be implemented in its original form, including the language and admissions clauses.

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

The EFF's 2024 manifesto promises free, decolonised education for all, free higher education up to a first degree for every student, cancellation of all student debt including NSFAS debt owed by graduates, and the readmission of students excluded for unpaid fees.

The government should sell SAA, the national airline.

The EFF's statement of 27 May 2025 calls SAA a strategic public asset whose role in economic development, connectivity and industrialisation cannot be handed to private interests, and describes the Takatso deal as privatisation disguised as reform. Nationalisation is a founding pillar of the party and its 2024 manifesto promises to end the privatisation of Eskom.

The mines should be brought under state ownership.

Nationalisation of mines, banks and other strategic sectors without compensation is one of the EFF's seven cardinal pillars, restated in the 2024 manifesto, and the party has tabled a Banks Amendment Bill for a state bank and a Reserve Bank nationalisation bill. A June 2026 statement again calls for strategic nationalisation.

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

In May 2025 the EFF rejected a policy direction letting Starlink bypass the 30 percent black ownership requirement in B-BBEE law through equity equivalents, saying transformation cannot be achieved without ownership, and in December 2025 it condemned the gazette that did so. Its founding manifesto also wants affirmative action legislation kept and extended.

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

The 2024 manifesto commits to nationalising mines, banks and other strategic sectors and to creating jobs through state-led and protected industrialisation. The founding manifesto says developing economies that adopt neoliberal prescriptions never achieve real development and that private corporate dominance cannot break the colonial economic structure.