Deep dive into the 436 of 1,378 analysed promises from ten LGE 2026 manifestos of contesting parties that are outside a council’s listed functions or led by another sphere: what they are about, and who holds the power instead. Whose power is it?Deep dive into the 436 of 1,378 analysed promises from ten LGE 2026 manifestos of contesting parties that are outside a council’s listed functions or led by another sphere: what they are about, and who holds the power instead. Whose power is it?
DA 2026 Local Government Election Manifesto.
Promise Assessment — Preview
Party logos belong to the parties and are shown for identification only. Ukweli is not affiliated with any party.
This analysis covers the DA manifesto only. Ukweli assesses every party’s manifesto on the same terms. Other parties’ manifestos will be added as they are obtained.
Manifesto documents are sourced directly from party publications; Ukweli does not editorially select which parties to include or exclude.
Eight pages of the DA manifesto (pages 2, 6, 19, 25, 31, 33, 41 and 49) are full-page photographs with no manifesto text.
Ukweli read the DA’s 2026 local government manifesto and identified 246 separate promises. 182 have been assessed against the Constitution. Ukweli could not assess the other 64; the reasons are set out below.
Of the 182 assessed promises:
59 are about services a municipality is responsible for delivering.
55 are about how the council runs itself: its money, staff, decisions and how it answers to residents.
0 are shared with other spheres of government.
34 are led by another sphere of government, with a defined role for the council.
21 are outside municipal powers. These are not a council's own responsibility; delivery rests with another sphere of government. See these promises ↓
13 are commitments about the party's own conduct, not the council's.
Ukweli also compared 112 of the DA’s 2026 promises with its 2021 local government manifesto. For 4 of them it found a matching 2021 passage, shown on the promise’s card. For the rest it found none; that does not prove nothing was said.
Ukweli gives no overall score or grade to a manifesto. Each promise is assessed on its own, and the detail follows below.
The detail
182assessed
Promises - Running of The Council55
Promises - Within Municipal Powers59
Promises - Led By Another Sphere, Council Has a Role34
Promises - Outside Municipal Powers21
Promises - Party Conduct13
0 of 246 promises assessed0%
0
Promises - Council Can Act On
Promises - Within Municipal Powers59
Promises - Running of The Council55
Promises - Shared With Other Spheres of Government0
0
Promises - Led By Another Sphere
0
Promises - Outside Municipal Powers
0
Promises - Party Conduct
Why only 182 of 246 promises are assessed
Ukweli reads every promise three separate times using an AI model, and checks each answer against the text of the Constitution. A verdict is published when all three readings agree and every check passes (a few are marked “Editor’s ruling”: there the editor decided after checking the Schedules). Where that did not happen, Ukweli publishes no verdict rather than a wrong one. These are the reasons the other 64 were not assessed. Click a reason to read more:
None of these reasons is a finding about a promise or about the party. Each describes a limit of Ukweli’s method. Ukweli may re-check these promises later.
