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

What we did: we took the manifesto data for the twelve parties as at 22 October 2026 and counted every promise that the comparison page places under “Electricity and energy”, 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We also keep Integrity Watch, a public register of documents that were corrected, withdrawn, refunded or punished after someone found made-up material in them.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 electricity and energy 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 electricity? #

South Africa has three spheres of government: national, provincial and local. Part B of Schedule 4 of the Constitution lists “electricity and gas reticulation” among the matters a municipality may administer. Reticulation means the local network that carries power to homes and businesses. Ukweli’s table records the limit this way: reticulation only, which is distribution, and generation and transmission are not a municipal competence. Street lighting is on the list in Part B of Schedule 5. Ending load-shedding, the scheduled national power cuts, is not a council’s matter, as Folio 08 explains.

Who runs the local network is not the same everywhere. Ukweli’s table of powers records the question this way: whether the council itself distributes electricity in that area, or Eskom does. The check is the licence for that area (Electricity Regulation Act, section 7). Section 27 of the Act sets out the duties of municipalities.

Generating power is a different matter. Ukweli’s table records the main power as the national regulator’s, by licence, with a district for bulk supply. Section 7 of the Electricity Regulation Act requires a licence from the regulator to operate a generation, transmission or distribution facility, or to be involved in trading, which the Act defines as the wholesale or retail buying and selling of electricity. A person involved in an activity listed in Schedule 2 of the Act need not hold a licence. The table records that a council may generate or buy power if it is licensed or exempt. A district’s bulk supply of electricity includes, for the purposes of that supply, the transmission, distribution and, where applicable, the generation of electricity (Municipal Structures Act, section 84(1)(c)).

What the electricity and energy promises are #

We counted every promise in the twelve manifestos that the comparison page files under “Electricity and energy”, one of its ten themes. We found 79, in ten manifestos. That is a count of where promises are filed, not a statement of what each manifesto says. BOSA has none filed under this theme, but its manifesto does speak about electricity: page 14 promises to manage Eskom bulk-electricity debt through negotiated repayment plans, and page 10 promises service charters with published response times for electricity faults. Both are filed under running the council. SACP has none filed under this theme. Its poster carries the line “Fair, pro-poor tariffs for water & electricity”, which is in our data under “Health, social support, youth, sport and culture” with no verdict, so it is in no count on this page. 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. GOOD’s promises are from its City of Cape Town plan only. Some sentences hold more than one promise, and we count each separately. Each promise sits under one theme only. A text search for “electric” finds 64 other promises under other themes, mostly under “Roads, transport and other infrastructure” (22) and “Running the council” (21). They are not counted here.

None of the 79 is in the group “Shared with other spheres of government”. Two are in “A party’s own conduct”.

Party by party #

Some parties made many electricity promises and some made one. The counts below say how much each wrote, and nothing about how good it is. Nine of the ten parties that have electricity promises have at least one within a council’s own powers. The IFP’s one promise carries no verdict. Six parties have at least one promise led by another sphere.

Inside a council’s own powers #

32 of the 66 assessed promises (48.5%) 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. 31 of the 32 cite the electricity and gas reticulation item. The other one, in the DA’s passage on managing electricity demand, cites municipal public works and street lighting. Six of the 32 cite more than one matter: public nuisances (2), water and sanitation (2) and street lighting (2).

31 of the 32 depend on the same fact. Whether the council can act depends on whether it is the body that distributes electricity in the area, or Eskom is. Before taking an electricity promise at face value, a voter can ask which of the two it is. Two of the 32 (EFF page 42 and GOOD page 3, both about meters) also cite the water and sanitation item, so they depend as well on which council is the water services authority.

The 32 are not all the same kind of promise. Ukweli records what kind of act each sentence commits to:

• Deliverable (21): the sentence commits to making something exist or providing something, and a reader could later check whether it happened. For example: “Mayibuye will implement a preventive maintenance programme for municipal electricity infrastructure to reduce avoidable outages.” (AMM, page 26).
• Aspiration (5): the sentence states a result the party wants but names no act that would produce it. For example: “A DA-led local government will focus on practical solutions that keep the lights on” (DA, page 23).
• Process (2): the sentence commits to how the work is organised, paid for or overseen, rather than to the result itself. For example: “The service providers who maintain the grid will be paid based on the percentage of uptime of the network.” (DA, page 22).
• Type not settled (4): no kind is shown, because it was not 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.

Led by another sphere, council has a role #

18 of the 66 assessed promises (27.3%) are here. A promise lands here when the main power belongs to another sphere of government, or to a national regulator, and the law gives the council a defined part. All 18 rest on the same row of Ukweli’s table: generating its own power or buying from private producers. The table gives the main power as the national regulator’s, by licence, and the council’s part this way: a council may generate or buy power if it is licensed or exempt.

Six parties have at least one promise here: ACDP 2, ActionSA 1, AMM 3, ANC 3, DA 7 and EFF 2. Two examples, each in the party’s words: “Empowering municipalities to buy and sell their own electricity.” (DA, page 22) and “strengthen municipal capacity for electricity self-generation” (ANC, page 22).

Across all 1,865 assessed promises from the 12 manifestos combined, on every topic, 189 (10.1%) are led by another sphere. On electricity the share is 27.3%.

A promise in this group is not a false promise. It means a council cannot keep it alone. Whether it can act depends on a licence or an exemption.

Outside a council’s powers #

Seven promises (10.6%) are outside a council’s powers, as Ukweli’s engine placed them. Three are about private suppliers and enterprises, such as solar geysers through private suppliers, vendor mark-ups and encouraging firms to build their own energy plants. Two are about national generation and the national grid, such as “Grant greater private access to the national grid for renewable energy companies, and build new transmission infrastructure” (ACDP, page 6). One is a promise to lobby the national regulator on electricity prices, and one is to strengthen coordination with Eskom. The Constitution’s electricity item for councils is the local network, so national generation and transmission are not a council’s matter. A promise outside a council’s powers is not a false one, but a council cannot keep it alone. A second reading placed three of the seven differently: see “How we counted”.

How the council runs itself #

The 7 promises here are about the council’s own machinery: how it bills, reports, outsources and sets rebates. ANC, EFF, FF Plus and GOOD have one each, and the DA has three. For example: “Publishing accessible, map-based reports showing exactly how electricity is performing in every area” (DA, page 23). They sit apart from the 32 services above because they are about how the council works, not what it provides.

A party’s own conduct #

Two promises are placed here, both the DA’s. This group is for sentences about what a party will do, such as push, lobby or campaign, and not about what the council delivers. For example, “The DA will utilise this funding exactly as intended: to appropriately ringfence electricity revenue” (DA, page 22). Ukweli does not test whether such a sentence is kept.

The promises with no verdict #

13 of the 79 (16.5%) carry no verdict. Across all 2,419 promises the share is 22.9%, so electricity is lower. The reasons:

Take “Generate and enable clean power: ANC municipalities will consider small scale embedded generation, and adopt a NERSA-approved wheeling tariff” (ANC, page 54). The three readings agreed that one part is about the local network and another part is about generating power, which 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.

Electricity promises split in two. About half of the assessed ones are about the local network, and almost all of those depend on whether the council or Eskom distributes in the area. A voter can ask which it is, and what the council will fix first. More than a quarter rest on generating or buying power, where a licence or an exemption from the national regulator decides what a council may do. A voter can ask whether the council has that licence or exemption, how long it will take, and who pays.

Questions to put to any candidate #

1. Does our council distribute electricity in this area, or does Eskom? What will you do where Eskom does?
2. Which substations, transformers and cables will you fix first, and by when?
3. If the plan is to generate or buy power, does the council have a licence or an exemption from the national regulator, and how long will that take?
4. What will it cost, who pays, and what will you publish so residents can see progress, such as outage hours and how fast faults are fixed?

Promises counted in two folios #

No electricity promise is also counted under another theme, so none is in the Safety folio (Folio 10) or the water folio (Folio 11). A search of the 79 for immigration and border words finds none, so none is among the 16 immigration promises in Folio 09. 64 of the 66 assessed electricity promises are among the 1,649 promises about council business that Folio 08 counts across every topic. The other two, which are a party’s own conduct, are not. Each folio stands alone.