LGE 2026 Manifestos: Safety promises, and the council’s share of them

What we did: we took the live manifesto data for the twelve parties on 22 October 2026 and counted every promise that the comparison page places under “Safety and crime”, by the verdict on each. Sources are listed at the end.

We also keep Integrity Watch, a public register of documents that were corrected, withdrawn, refunded or punished after someone found made-up material in them.

This folio is about a different kind of check. It asks which of the safety promises in election manifestos a council can deliver after winning.

The 2026 local elections in short #

The vote. South Africans vote in local government elections on 4 November 2026. They choose the councillors who run 257 municipalities: 8 metropolitan (big-city), 44 district and 205 local. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) certified 136,790 candidates for 10,526 council seats. On 15 October 2026 the Constitutional Court directed the IEC to take the steps needed to put 181 ANC candidates on the ballot in six municipalities, so the final count will change. On 16 October 2026 the IEC said 32 other parties in the same position would get the same relief.

How many parties. 732 political parties are registered with the IEC at various levels. The IEC says 546 of them nominated candidates for this election.

What a council does. South Africa has three spheres of government: national, provincial and local. Part B of Schedules 4 and 5 of the Constitution list the matters a municipality may administer: 38 in all, among them drinking water and domestic waste-water and sewage systems, electricity and gas reticulation (the local networks), refuse removal, municipal roads and street trading. Jobs, schools, hospitals, welfare, the courts and immigration are not on those lists. A council can still lobby, partner with or press the government that holds the power.

What a manifesto is. A manifesto is a party’s published list of promises, so that voters can read them and decide.

What Ukweli did. Ukweli has analysed twelve party manifestos for this election. It found 2,419 promises and quoted each in the party’s own words, with its page. It checked each promise it could assess against the Constitution’s lists of what a council does. Where a sentence is too short or vague to test, or Ukweli’s checks did not settle it, the card says “Could not be assessed by Ukweli”. Where a sentence promises several things that fall under different powers or spheres of government, the card says “Mixes different powers”. Both labels describe Ukweli’s check, not the party.

Who is in. The twelve parties are shown below. Ukweli analyses any 2026 local government manifesto it can obtain from the party’s own publication. That is a rule about documents, never a judgement about a party. Parties have reported 19 manifesto launches; for the other seven, Ukweli cannot yet reach a readable document online. Many other parties contest the election, and this folio does not cover them.

Each party’s assessment is one click away.

ACDPRead the assessment →ActionSARead the assessment →AMMRead the assessment →ANCRead the assessment →BOSARead the assessment →DARead the assessment →EFFRead the assessment →FF PlusRead the assessment →GOODRead the assessment →IFPRead the assessment →SACPRead the assessment →UDMRead the assessment →

Each button opens that party’s assessment on ukweli.io in a new tab, so this page stays open. Party logos belong to the parties and are shown for identification only. Ukweli is not affiliated with any party.

What Ukweli does not do. It does not score, grade, rank or endorse any party. It does not say whether a promise will be kept or whether it is affordable. A promise outside a council’s powers is not a false promise.

Figures in this section as at 22 October 2026. They come from the IEC, the Constitution’s schedules and Ukweli’s live manifesto pages (sources at the end), and they move when a manifesto is added or the IEC publishes a new figure. Errors: hello@ukweli.io.

Who is responsible for safety? #

South Africa has three spheres of government: national, provincial and local. Policing belongs mainly to the national sphere, through the South African Police Service (SAPS). A council is not left out. It enforces its own by-laws, controls public nuisances, and handles traffic and parking. It may also set up a municipal police service, but only with provincial approval, which may carry conditions, and after the National Commissioner is consulted. That service’s functions include preventing crime. It also runs a short list of services that make a place safer: firefighting, street lighting, traffic and parking, building regulations, public places, businesses that sell liquor to the public, and street trading.

That is why a safety promise can be hard to place. “More police on our streets” and “fix our streetlights” both sound like safety, but they sit with different spheres. Ukweli reads each promise against the Constitution’s lists and the law that gives a council its role, and tells you which it is.

Where the law and Ukweli’s table of powers say so: Constitution, Schedule 5 Part B (“control of public nuisances” and “traffic and parking”); South African Police Service Act 68 of 1995, sections 64A and 64E.

What the safety promises are #

We counted every promise in the twelve manifestos that falls under safety and crime, using the same ten themes as the comparison page. We found 212, and every party has some. Some sentences hold more than one promise, and we count each separately. None of the 212 falls in the sixth group, “Shared with other spheres of government”. Shares are of the 141 we could assess.

Party by party #

Some parties write long safety chapters and some write one line. The counts below say how much each wrote, and nothing about how good it is.

Inside a council’s own powers #

29 promises are on matters the Constitution gives a council, so it does not need another sphere’s permission to act on them. That says nothing about money or capacity. Ten of the 38 matters on the Constitution’s lists appear. A promise to keep the streetlights working is one a council can deliver: “Improving street lighting in high-risk areas and transport routes” (DA, page 30). Three parties (ANC, GOOD and SACP) have none in this group.

Led by another sphere, council has a role #

This is the largest group. A promise lands here when the main power belongs to another sphere of government and the law gives the council a defined part. Of the 62:

• 51 rest on policing and crime. The main power is national (SAPS). The council’s part is by-laws, public nuisances, traffic, and a municipal police service if the MEC approves.
• 10 rest on disasters such as floods and other large emergencies. National and provincial government share the power to make law on disaster management (Constitution, Schedule 4 Part A). Metros and districts have primary responsibility for local disasters, and a district acts after consulting the local council. A district and a local council may agree that the local council takes it on (Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002, section 54).
• 1 rests on business licensing, where the Businesses Act lets the body that licenses businesses in an area be named by notice in the Official Gazette (Businesses Act 71 of 1991, section 2(1)).

Nine of the twelve parties have at least one promise here. Two examples, each in the party’s words: “Devolve policing down to the lowest level depending on the capacity of that level” (ACDP, page 11) and “Mayibuye will develop a disaster-management system for natural disasters” (AMM, page 33).

Across all 1,865 assessed promises from the 12 manifestos combined, on every topic, 189 (10.1%) are led by another sphere. On safety the share is 44.0%.

A promise in this group is not a false promise. It means a council cannot keep it alone.

Outside a council’s powers #

Of the 21 promises outside a council’s powers, twelve are about courts and prosecutions, and four about welfare and support for victims of gender-based violence. Two are about immigration and border control, and one is about mineral resources. Two more Ukweli placed outside without naming a subject. The Constitution gives none of the named subjects to a council.

How the council runs itself #

The 22 promises here are about the council’s own machinery, such as training by-law officers, tracking notices and cases, protecting its own property and holding community safety forums. A council controls how it does these. They sit apart from the 29 services above because they are about how it works, not what it provides.

A party’s own conduct #

Seven promises are about what the party will do, such as push, lobby or campaign, not about what the council delivers. For example, “The DA will continue advocating for the empowerment of municipalities to fight crime directly” (DA, page 28). Ukweli does not test whether such a sentence is kept.

The promises with no verdict #

71 of the 212 (33.5%) carry no verdict. Across all 2,419 promises the share is 22.9%, so safety is higher. The reasons:

Take “use every lawful municipal power available to help tackle crime and illegal immigration” (ActionSA, page 3). It names two subjects, crime and illegal immigration, that fall under different powers, so one verdict would be wrong for part of it. We do not guess. The card says so.

Our view #

This is the folio’s own view. It is kept apart from the counts above.

When you read a safety promise before you vote, ask whose job it is. A councillor can light a street and staff a fire station. Policing is mainly SAPS’s job, and the courts are not a council’s. A promise outside the council’s hands can still be something a council acts on, by lobbying, by partnering with SAPS or by funding something the law lets it fund. It is worth asking the candidate which of those it is.

Questions to put to any candidate #

1. Which part of this safety promise does the council itself control, and which part needs SAPS or national government?
2. If a municipal police service is part of the plan, has the MEC approved it, and what will it cost?
3. Which of the services a council does run (firefighting, streetlights, traffic) gets money first?
4. When this promise needs another sphere, what will the council do if that sphere says no?

Promises counted in two folios #

Folio 09 counts 16 immigration promises. 8 of them are also among the 212 here, because the comparison page places them under safety. Of these 8, 2 are outside a council’s powers, 1 is led by another sphere, 4 mix different powers and 1 is not assessed. This is a separate reading, matched by party, page and wording, and not by a shared record number. Counting them in both folios is deliberate: each folio stands alone.