LGE 2026 Manifestos: Water and sanitation 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 “Water and sanitation”, 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We also keep Integrity Watch, a public register of documents that were corrected, withdrawn, refunded or punished after someone found made-up material in them.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 water and sanitation 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 water and sanitation? #

South Africa has three spheres of government: national, provincial and local. Part B of Schedule 4 of the Constitution lists “water and sanitation services” among the matters a municipality may administer, with a limit: only “potable water supply systems and domestic waste-water and sewage disposal systems”. Drinking water and sewage are a council’s matter. Dams, rivers and raw (untreated) water are not on that list. Under the National Water Act, national government, acting through the Minister, is the public trustee of the nation’s water resources.

Which council runs the service is not the same everywhere. The Water Services Act defines a “water services authority” as a municipality responsible for ensuring access to water services. Ukweli’s table of powers records the question this way: the water services authority is a metro, a district, or a local council that the Minister has authorised (Municipal Structures Act, section 84(3)(a)). So a promise made by a local-council candidate can be one that the district council, not the local council, has to keep. The Water Services Act also says everyone has a right of access to basic water supply and basic sanitation (section 3(1)).

What the water and sanitation promises are #

We counted every promise in the twelve manifestos that the comparison page files under “Water and sanitation”, one of its ten themes. We found 117, in eleven manifestos. That is a count of where promises are filed, not a statement of what each manifesto says. GOOD has none filed under this theme, but its plan does speak about water: page 3 promises to price water and electricity in tiers, filed under running the council, and page 4 promises water, sanitation and electricity to informal settlements upgraded where people already live, filed under housing, land and title deeds. GOOD’s promises are from its City of Cape Town plan only. SACP’s promises come from its August 2026 Umsebenzi newsletter, not from a standalone manifesto: a launch statement and a poster. The poster has 28 bullet points and our data holds a row for 22 of them. The other 6 are two slogans, two “must” statements and two statements of stance or value, and are in no count on this page. One of the 22 is “Fair, pro-poor tariffs for water & electricity”, filed under “Health, social support, youth, sport and culture” with no verdict, so it is in no water count. Some sentences hold more than one promise, and we count each separately. Each promise sits under one theme only. A text search finds 116 other promises that mention “water” or “sanitation” but sit under other themes, mostly roads and other infrastructure (44) and running the council (28). They are not counted here. The same number is a coincidence. Shares are of the 97 we could assess.

One promise is in the group “Shared with other spheres of government”: ActionSA’s plan for water security, “We will plan for population growth, increasing demand, climate change and water scarcity” (page 14). The reading for this group is that the council shares the function and cannot deliver it alone. Two groups have no water promise: “Led by another sphere, council has a role” and “A party’s own conduct”.

Party by party #

Some parties made many water promises and some made one. The counts below say how much each wrote, and nothing about how good it is. Every party that has a water promise has at least one within a council’s own powers. Four GOOD sentences that mention water or sanitation sit under other themes.

Inside a council’s own powers #

82 of the 97 assessed promises (84.5%) are on a matter the Constitution gives a council, so it does not need another sphere’s permission to act on them. Across all 1,865 assessed promises from the 12 manifestos combined, on every topic, 392 (21.0%) are within a council’s own powers. That says nothing about money or capacity. All 82 cite the water and sanitation item, and 15 also cite another matter, such as municipal health services or refuse removal.

All 82 depend on the same fact. Whether the council can act depends on whether it is the water services authority for the area. Before taking a water promise at face value, a voter can ask which council that is.

The 82 are not all the same kind of promise. Ukweli records what kind of act each sentence commits to:

• Deliverable (60): the sentence commits to making something exist or providing something, and a reader could later check whether it happened. For example: “Mayibuye will eradicate bucket toilets and unsafe sanitation.” (AMM, page 23).
• Aspiration (11): the sentence states a result the party wants but names no act that would produce it. For example: “A DA-led local government will make sure that when a tap is turned on, water comes out.” (DA, page 16).
• Process (2): the sentence commits to a step of deciding or overseeing, such as to plan, review, report or set up a body, rather than to the result itself. For example: “Mayibuye will conduct regular water-quality testing and publish results in accessible formats” (AMM, page 22).
• Type not settled (9): no kind is shown, because it could not be settled.

An aspiration is not a worse promise than a deliverable. The kind says only whether the sentence names an act that could be checked.

Outside a council’s powers #

Eight promises (8.2%) are outside a council’s powers. Five are about dams, rivers, raw water and national water law, such as “Clean, protect, and develop freshwater bodies, including rivers, dams, and aquifers” (ACDP, page 9). The Constitution’s water item for councils is limited to drinking water and domestic sewage, so bulk and raw water resource management is not a council’s matter. One is about irrigation for farming, one is about sanitation in every public school and clinic, and one is a promise to support a national water bill. A promise outside a council’s powers is not a false one, but a council cannot keep it alone.

How the council runs itself #

The 6 promises here are about the council’s own machinery: how it reports, staffs and spends. DA has three, and BOSA, FF Plus and SACP one each. For example: “Publishing accessible reports of where water leaks are located” (DA, page 17). They sit apart from the 82 services above because they are about how the council works, not what it provides.

The promises with no verdict #

20 of the 117 (17.1%) carry no verdict. Across all 2,419 promises the share is 22.9%, so water is lower. The reasons:

Take “Water and energy security will be prioritised through reliable reticulation, pressure management, leak reduction, and local generation or storage solutions that reduce the burden of high tariffs and intermittent supply on working-class households.” (AMM, page 84). The three readings agreed that its parts 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.

Most water promises fall within what a council may do: 82 of 97. That makes them easier to hold to account, and the gaps easier to see. A voter does not need to ask whether the council may fix a leaking pipe. A voter can ask who holds the water function in the area, what will be fixed first, and how the council will show it was done. Eleven of the 82 name a result and no act. A candidate can be asked what the act is.

Questions to put to any candidate #

1. Is our council the water services authority, and if not, which council is? How will you work with it?
2. Which pipes, plants or sewers will you fix first, and by when?
3. What will you publish so residents can see progress, such as where leaks are, how fast faults are fixed and the results of water-quality tests?
4. What will this cost, and will money from water bills be spent on water?

Promises counted in two folios #

No water promise is also counted under another theme, so none is in the Safety folio (Folio 10). A search of the 117 for immigration and border words finds none, so none is among the 16 immigration promises in Folio 09. All 97 assessed water promises are among the 1,649 promises about council business that Folio 08 counts across every topic. Each folio stands alone.