LGE 2026 Manifestos: Inside the running-the-council promises, subject by subject

What we did: we took the manifesto data for the twelve parties as at 22 October 2026 and searched the 736 promises under “Running the council” for ten sets of words. Sources are listed at the end.

Party names. ACDP is the African Christian Democratic Party. AMM is the Afrika Mayibuye Movement. ANC is the African National Congress. DA is the Democratic Alliance. EFF is the Economic Freedom Fighters. FF Plus is the Freedom Front Plus. IFP is the Inkatha Freedom Party. SACP is the South African Communist Party. UDM is the United Democratic Movement. ActionSA and GOOD are the full names of those two parties. BOSA is written here as the party writes it in its manifesto.

We also keep Integrity Watch, a public register of documents that were corrected, withdrawn, refunded or punished after someone found made-up material in them.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 looks inside one theme and counts which words its promises contain.

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 are 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. As at 30 October 2026, parties have reported 27 manifestos. Ukweli can reach a readable document online for 15 of them and has analysed 12 of those 15. For the rest, Ukweli cannot 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 2026 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 decides what sits within a council’s powers? #

South Africa has three spheres of government: national, provincial and local. A council is the local sphere. The matters a council has the right to run are listed in Part B of Schedule 4 and Part B of Schedule 5 of the Constitution (section 156(1)(a)). National or provincial law can assign it more (section 156(1)(b)). Ukweli’s table of powers holds 38 matters from those two lists, 15 from Schedule 4 and 23 from Schedule 5, and checks each promise against them. The table holds only those 38 matters. Folio 08 explains how.

How we searched #

Folio 18 counted the 736 promises that Ukweli places under “Running the council”, one of the ten themes. They come from all twelve manifestos. This folio asks a different question: which words do these promises contain?

We made ten word lists, one for each subject. A promise counts under a subject if it contains any word on that list. The lists are at the end of this folio. We chose the subjects and the words. They are not Ukweli’s findings.

A promise can contain words from more than one list, so it can count under more than one subject. The counts therefore do not add up to 736.

A word count says which words a promise contains. It does not say what the promise is about, or what a manifesto contains.

The ten subjects #

Of the 736 promises, 564 (76.6%) contain words from at least one list. The other 172 contain none.

Money words appear in 215 promises (29.2%). Reporting words appear in 211 (28.7%). Staff words appear in 116 (15.8%).

Coalition words appear in 10 promises and digital words in 28. Counts this small say little.

Many promises count under more than one subject. The largest overlap is money with reporting, at 63 promises. Procurement and corruption overlap in 53, because the corruption list includes procurement and tender.

The same words also appear in promises that Ukweli places under other themes. Participation words, for example, appear in 79 promises here and in 57 elsewhere. So these counts do not show how many promises on a subject exist across all 2,419. A count says where Ukweli placed a promise, not what a manifesto contains.

Which promises contain these words #

Most promises that contain these words are in the group “How the council runs itself”. That holds for 169 of the 215 money promises. It holds for 105 of the 116 staff promises. It holds for 76 of the 87 procurement promises.

Words about councillors and political office are the exception. Of the 84 promises with those words, 31 are in the group “A party’s own conduct”, such as what councillors will do themselves. A count says where Ukweli placed a promise, not what a manifesto contains.

What kind of commitment these promises make #

Ukweli reads each assessed promise for the kind of commitment it makes. Of the 659 assessed promises under this theme, 218 are deliverables. A deliverable commits to doing or providing something.

Another 196 are process promises, about how the work is organised, paid for or overseen. And 170 are aspirations: a result the party wants, with no act named. For 75 no kind is shown.

Of the 218 deliverables, 14 contain a number written in digits. A promise with a number or a date is easier for a voter to check later. A count says where Ukweli placed a promise, not what a manifesto contains.

The twelve manifestos, subject by subject #

The grid shows, for each manifesto, how many of its promises under “Running the council” contain the words for each subject. The base is that manifesto’s own promises under this theme. It is shown beside the name.

Read it with care. A promise can contain words from several subjects, so a row does not add up to 100%. Bases run from 7 to 149 promises, so a count of 3 means different things for different manifestos. For ACDP, GOOD, IFP and SACP, which have fewer than 30 promises under this theme, the grid shows counts only, without shading.

Showing the number of promises. Shading follows the share.

For each manifesto, the number of its promises under Running the council that contain the words for each of ten subjects

Manifesto	Money and budgets	Reporting and openness	Staff and appointments	Corruption and wrongdoing	Procurement and contracts	Councillors and political office	Public participation	Service standards and delivery	Digital and technology	Coalitions
ACDP23 promises	4	9	5	5	1	2	1	3	0†	1
ActionSA144 promises	40	42	27	31	21	23	12	17	8	3
AMM149 promises	27	35	10	16	8	21	25	11	1	0
ANC135 promises	49	52	18	17	20	18	19	10	7	3
BOSA38 promises	10	15	9	8	5	5	3	6	3	2
DA47 promises	14	10	17	7	6	0†	0†	1	2	0
EFF39 promises	12	9	7	10	11	3	2	4	3	0
FF Plus60 promises	22	7	14	6	3	6	2	6	2	0†
GOOD26 promises	14	8	1	2	4	0	7	0†	1	0
IFP19 promises	6	7	6	6	5	4	1	1	0†	0
SACP7 promises	0†	2	0†	1	2	1	0†	0	0	0
UDM49 promises	17	15	2	4	1	1	7	8	1	1
All twelve pooledevery promise counts once	215	211	116	113	87	84	79	67	28	10

Swipe sideways to see the whole grid.

Smaller shareLarger (50% and above)

What the grid shows

• Three manifestos, ActionSA, AMM and ANC, hold 428 of the 736 promises (58.2%). The pooled counts therefore mostly reflect these three. Their part of the promises that contain a subject’s words runs from 47% for staff words to 74% for councillor words.
• Take the eight manifestos with 30 or more promises under this theme. The share of promises containing money words runs from 18.1% to 36.7% across them. For reporting words it runs from 11.7% to 39.5%. For staff words it runs from 4.1% to 36.2%, for procurement words from 2.0% to 28.2%, and for participation words from 0.0% to 16.8%.
• Across the same eight, the share of promises that contain words from at least one subject runs from 68% to 82%.
• A count says where Ukweli placed a promise, not what a manifesto contains.

What a zero means

Eighteen cells show 0. A 0 means none of that manifesto’s promises under this theme contain the words. It does not mean the manifesto has no promise on the subject. In 9 of the 18 cells, the same manifesto has promises under other themes that contain the words. Those cells carry a dagger, and the note under the grid gives the count. The other 9 cells have no such promise in the rows Ukweli has published. Even so, a manifesto’s rows are what Ukweli extracted, not everything the party wrote, so a 0 never shows that a manifesto is silent on a subject.

What these counts do not say #

A word count is not a finding. A promise about money can use none of our money words. A promise with a money word can be about something else. In all, 172 of the 736 promises contain words from none of the ten lists.

A manifesto’s promise count measures what Ukweli extracted, not what the party wrote. In the DA manifesto, 17 lines that Ukweli read as headings, slogans or framing lines are not counted. In the SACP text, 6 poster lines are not counted either.

The SACP text is a newsletter that contains its manifesto, not a standalone manifesto file. GOOD’s analysis covers its Cape Town plan only.

Our view #

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

Most of these promises are in the group “How the council runs itself”. Residents can ask a candidate about that part of a council’s work directly: what will be published, by when, and where residents can read it.

Questions to put to any candidate #

1. Which of your promises on budgets will you report on to residents, with a number and a date?
2. Which senior posts will you fill by open advert, and what will the published criteria be?
3. If your party joins a coalition, what part of your manifesto goes into the written agreement, and where will residents read it?