Elections 2024: Political party manifestos

There is more to voting than choosing a charismatic personality or appealing leader. The parties that get the most votes will push the agendas they published earlier this year.

If you haven’t had a chance to look at the differences between the parties or to double-check check the vote you want to cast aligns with your values – we have you covered.

Here are, in order the party gave them, the most important issues of the ANC, DA, EFF, ActionSA, Rise Msanzi and the IFP.

African National Congress (ANC)

Jobs
• Public employment programmes that create work opportunities in the public, small business and social sectors • Create and sustain 2.5 million work opportunities
• Continue to promote and monitor employment equity to ensure that black people, women and persons with disabilities are represented in the public and private sectors.

Economy
• Fix the current constraint in energy, transport and logistics as important network industries and strategic national assets which are critical to industrialisation, growth and development.

Cost of living
• Prioritise food security through VAT exemption on essential items, land reform, and support for community and home gardens
• Maintain and expand subsidised basic services like water and houses for the poor policies in municipalities
• Strengthen health services and implement the National Health Insurance (NHI) to make quality health care affordable and available to all.

Service delivery
• Improve access to, and the quality of education and health
• Meet all basic needs, including investing in education and improving health outcomes.

Democracy
• Advance the rights and dignity of children, youth, older persons, persons with disability and members of the LGBTQI+ community
• Intensify the war on crime and make our communities safe.

Africa
• Promote peace, security, democracy and socio-economic development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Democratic Alliance (DA)

Jobs
• Create jobs for the youth, overhauling restrictive regulations and removing racial targets or quotas
• Change the tax system to encourage investment

Water and power-shedding
• Secure power supplies and end load-shedding by breaking Eskom’s monopoly
• Enable increased self-generation among consumers, businesses, and municipalities
• Prioritise investment in grid infrastructure.

Crime
• Decentralise policing to capable provinces to effectively fight crime
• Ensure whistle-blowers are protected.

Cadre deployment
• Fill all posts in public service with competent and qualified individuals thereby establishing a non-partisan, professional public service
• Replace the Public Service Act with the new legal framework
• Contain inflated government costs by reducing the number of ministers, deputy ministers, and ministerial offices.

Poverty
• Replace BBBEE with the Sustainable Development Goals
• Increase child support grants to the same level as the official food poverty line
• Convert the Social Relief of Distress Grant (SRD) into a Job Seekers Grant.

Education
• Ensure that each child gets 210 full teaching days per year
• Devote the first two hours of each school day in the Foundation Phase (Grade R – Grade 3) to developing reading and writing skills
• End trade union control of teacher appointments
• Aim to reduce the school dropout rate by 10% annually.

ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS (EFF)

Land
• Expropriation of land without compensation
• The state will be the custodian of all land
• Restrictions to foreign land ownership.

Jobs
• Ensure a minimum of 80% of the goods and services procured by the state are domestically produced
• Small and medium-sized enterprises to be given strategic support
• Protect the rights of street hawkers and informal traders.

Energy
• Invest in repairing the existing fleet of power generation units
• Adopt clean coal technologies
• Terminate existing contracts with independent power producers and halt the roll-out of new independent power producer projects.

Education
• Free, decolonised education for all
• Criminalise all parents who do not take their children to school
• Ensure all schools have access to adequate sanitation.

Public safety
• By 2029, establish satellite police stations that will be open 24 hours a day and seven days a week in every ward
• Require all police stations to have DNA kits by the end of 2025 and build a DNA laboratory in each province.

Defence
• Mandate each person undergo compulsory military training for a year or six months after matric
• Increase the defence budget.

Health
• Create a comprehensive and supportive legal environment for the governance of universal health coverage
• Implement a vaccination programme to cover 100% of all South Africans.

Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP)

Economy
• End load-shedding through a mixed, diversified energy system
• Reduce small business failures and create meaningful jobs
• Invest in infrastructure.

Jobs
• Reserve job opportunities and small enterprise market for South Africans with an 80/20 target
• Reserve small enterprise market and spaza shop industry for South Africans.

Healthcare
• Put the elderly and vulnerable children first
• Increase old age and child support grants, while also expanding the food voucher system
• Champion universal health coverage.

Poor and rural communities
• Put poor urban and rural communities first and partner with traditional leaders
• Revitalise Ithala Bank, ensuring it becomes fully functional and a model of a state bank.

Land
• Advocate for the protection and support of the Ingonyama Trust, to ensure everyone has land
• Support small-scale farming as a measure to revitalise the economy.

Security
• Prioritise safety, including ending South Africa’s illegal migration crisis
• Support traditional courts and enhanced roles for traditional leadership in provincial and local governance
• Open national debate on the reinstatement of the death penalty to deter violent crimes
• Increase SANDF resources, and equipment and improve training
• Establish effective intelligence gathering, combat corruption and criminal activity, and improve the welfare of military veterans.

Rise Mzanzi

Governance
• Reform Cabinet
• Review presidential and ministerial authority over key appointments to replace cadre deployment.

Political reforms
• A mixed open-party list, proportional representation, and constituency-based electoral system
• Expand public participation in parliamentary oversight and accountability
• Reinforce the effectiveness of Chapter 9 institutions.

Economy
• Adopt a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach to improve basic education and provide skills training opportunities
• Place dysfunctional municipalities under administration
• Invest resources in fighting crime
• Provide skills training opportunities for one million people without matric within five years.

Well-being
• End hunger and ensure affordable, nutritious food for the poor
• Convert local clinics into primary healthcare centres
• Deliver potable water to every home, and sanitation infrastructure for every community.

Security
• Professionalise and equip the police
• Modernise the criminal justice system
• Strengthen and resource existing institutions, like NPU, SIU and courts.

Climate
• Balance inclusive development and the need for a low-carbon economy
• Accelerate the shift to a more decentralised energy system
• Open to a role for gas in the transition.

Immigration
• Dramatically reduce irregular immigration
• Ease entry into South Africa for skilled workers, travellers and tourists to aid economic development and job creation.

ActionSA

Economy
• Improve economic infrastructure, enhancing support for businesses, and enabling job creation
• Increase participation of previously disadvantaged people in the economy.
• Envision a future where all South Africans achieve financial freedom and have the opportunity for upward mobility
• Roadmap to 4.8 million sustainable jobs created by 2029
• Reforming the Protection of Investment Act to reduce bureaucratic barriers and remove excessive limitations to foreign direct investment.

Energy
• Access to affordable and reliable electricity
• End load-shedding by establishing a competitive energy market that provides affordable, reliable, and sustainable electricity.

Education
• Reform the education system by focusing on getting the basics right first.
• Expand support for learners and educators.

Law and order
• Strengthen the criminal justice system and police to protect all from the effects of crime and corruption.

Immigration
• Resolve the immigration crisis by reforming immigration policies to be more efficient and promote legal entry
• Harness the potential of immigration trends to increase economic growth and promote prosperity.

Social support
• Protect vulnerable members of society by providing access to quality healthcare and social support services
• Provide access to quality healthcare and social support services.

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