Our Plan to Get Every Town and City Working For All.
Local government is where South Africans experience government most directly. The effectiveness of your local government determines whether your taps run, streetlights work, refuse trucks arrive, roads are maintained, and local economies are creating opportunity. When local government fails, it is families, businesses and communities who pay the price.
Our Promise
Our promise is simple: the DA will get your municipality working for all. We will build stable, professional local governments that serve residents, not politicians, and that focus relentlessly on the basics that make daily life possible.
The DA’s 2026 Manifesto is a plan for practical change: fix what is broken, protect what works, and build municipalities that deliver for all. The DA does not make empty promises. We already have a proven track record of good governance and effective service delivery. Our manifesto tells you not just what we will do, but how. South Africans are tired of hearing the same empty promises repeated every five years. The DA has already proven that we deliver, and within this Manifesto we explain exactly how.
The DA Will Get Your Municipality Working By:
- Ending cadre deployment and corruption by appointing competent people on merit, enforcing consequences for poor performance and making procurement more transparent.
- Getting water flowing by ringfencing water revenue for water infrastructure, fixing leaks, upgrading wastewater systems and bringing in private investment and technical expertise where it improves delivery.
- Keeping the lights on by reinvesting electricity revenue into municipal grids, enabling municipalities to buy and sell power, and supporting households and businesses that feed surplus electricity into the grid.
- Making communities safer by bringing policing closer to residents, expanding municipal safety capacity, improving partnerships with SAPS, neighbourhood watches and private security, and using technology to fight crime.
- Cleaning up towns and cities by restoring waste collection, maintaining public spaces, improving municipal clinics, protecting the environment and partnering with communities and responsible private-sector organisations.
- Creating jobs and growing local economies by cutting red tape, supporting small businesses and informal traders, improving transport, unlocking investment, releasing well-located land and delivering title deeds.
If the DA governs your town, this is our plan to protect progress and build on solid foundations. If the DA is yet to govern your town, this is the plan to fix what is broken and prove that your town can work.
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Read the DA’s Local Government Election 2026 Manifesto and help us get South Africa’s towns and cities working for all.