Capable, Ethical Government: The ANC’s Action Five, Explained

The party that polices itself

The African National Congress has always understood that the movement’s credibility rests on the conduct of its public representatives. From the Code of Conduct adopted at the Nasrec conference to the integrity framework renewed at each national elective gathering, the ANC’s internal discipline has been the foundation on which its governance rests. Action Five of the 2026 manifesto carries that tradition into local government with unprecedented specificity.

The instruments are named. The Step Aside Rule, applied to ANC councillors and mayors. Lifestyle audits, published annually, for every mayor, member of the mayoral committee and senior manager. Recall, through due process, for persistent failure. Each has a deadline, a mechanism and a public reporting requirement.

This is the seventh piece in The People’s Register’s Masakhe series, after the 100-days timeline, the 8% maintenance rule, the one-million opportunities, the safety forums and the unfunded budgets piece. Action Five is where the movement’s organisational discipline becomes municipal governance.

What Action Five promises

The action area’s measurable commitments:

Alongside these, the action area commits to 50/50 gender representation in candidate selection, to reflecting disability and youth needs in municipal plans and budgets, and to the ANC’s long-standing principle that the movement’s strength is drawn from the full diversity of the communities it serves.

The 120-day clock on every post

The single most consequential line in Action Five is its simplest: every critical municipal management post filled within 120 days of vacancy. Not advertised within 120 days. Not shortlisted within 120 days. Filled, on merit, by a candidate who meets the professional standard the manifesto sets.

For Nelson Mandela Bay, whose infrastructure department carries a 44% vacancy rate and has filled three of 73 advertised critical-maintenance posts, the commitment speaks directly to the metro’s lived experience. Every vacant post is a service that is not delivered, a project that is not managed, a budget line that is not spent. The 120-day clock converts a chronic condition into a date-certain obligation.

The manifesto pairs the deadline with the method. Merit-based appointments, under a professionalisation framework, with the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency and other national institutions providing technical support. The commitment to strengthen in-house financial, engineering, technical, legal, procurement and project-management capacity is a commitment to rebuild the municipal profession, not merely to fill a chair.

Insourcing: ending the tenderpreneur economy

Action Five’s insourcing commitment is both a governance instrument and a class commitment. The manifesto commits to directly hire workers for services that municipalities have outsourced to contractors who exploit vulnerable workers while draining municipal budgets. Waste collection, security, cleaning, meter reading, water tankering: each is a core municipal function that returns to municipal employment.

The financial logic is clear. A contractor charges for labour, for overheads and for profit. A municipal worker is paid a wage, governed by collective bargaining, and the difference stays in the municipal budget. In a metro where the tenderpreneur economy has extracted millions from service delivery budgets, insourcing redirects that money to workers and to services.

The class logic is equally clear. The workers who collect waste, read meters and clean public spaces are the working-class communities the ANC exists to serve. Insourcing secures their employment rights, their pension contributions and their medical aid. It ends the revolving door of short-term contracts that has characterised municipal outsourcing for a decade.

Lifestyle audits and the Step Aside Rule

The ANC’s Step Aside Rule requires members who face credible allegations of serious wrongdoing to step aside from their positions while the matter is investigated. It is an organisational rule, adopted through the movement’s internal democratic structures, and it exists because the ANC understands that public confidence in the movement depends on the movement being seen to act on its own standards.

Lifestyle audits complement the rule. They compare a public representative’s known income with their observable standard of living, and they are the single most effective tool for detecting unexplained wealth. The manifesto commits to annual publication for mayors, MMCs and senior managers, which turns a confidential management tool into a public accountability instrument.

Together, the two mechanisms create a system. The Step Aside Rule removes those facing credible allegations from the decisions they could influence. Lifestyle audits surface the unexplained wealth that prompts the allegations. Neither is new to the ANC’s internal framework. What is new is the deadline, the public reporting and the application to every ANC-led municipality.

Recall, and the councillor’s certificate

The recall commitment is the action area’s political edge. Persistent failure to meet agreed responsibilities, the manifesto states, will trigger consequence management, including a recall of councillors, subject to due process. The threat is not theoretical: it gives the party a mechanism to act on non-performance that does not wait for the next election.

The three-year Local Government Leadership Certificate is the constructive counterpart. Every ANC councillor will complete a compulsory programme in municipal governance, finance and service delivery. A councillor who understands the Municipal Finance Management Act, the Integrated Development Plan process and the budget cycle is a councillor who can hold officials to account, and a councillor who can be held to account for what they should have known.

The certificate is also an investment in the movement’s next generation of public representatives. The knowledge it carries is the knowledge that turns a branch activist into an effective public servant, and the manifesto’s commitment to it is a commitment to the ANC’s own renewal.

Coalitions, written and public

For metros and districts where no single party governs alone, Action Five requires every ANC coalition agreement to be written and publicly available. Coalition arrangements must protect the budget process, professional administration and service delivery from the instability that has characterised hung councils in recent years.

The commitment is procedural, but its consequences are practical. A written, public coalition agreement gives residents, officials and investors a document against which the government’s conduct can be measured. It constrains the midnight reshuffle and the budget-day surprise. It converts coalition politics from a private bargain into a public contract.

The manifesto goes further, committing to legislative reform to strengthen stability in hung councils, including through the Municipal Structures Amendment Bill. The reform agenda is the ANC governing as a majority party that has learned from the coalition experience: the rules need to change, and the party that leads the national government is the party positioned to change them.

The Bay’s test

Nelson Mandela Bay has governed through coalitions, vacancy crises and audit findings. Action Five’s instruments address each directly: the 120-day clock on the metro’s vacant posts, the lifestyle audit on its leadership, the written coalition agreement if the next council is hung, and the leadership certificate for every ANC councillor elected on 4 November.

The first test is the appointments clock. When a critical post falls vacant in the new term, does it fill within 120 days? The second is the audit: is the lifestyle audit published, annually, with its outcomes? The third is the agreement: if the Bay’s next council is a coalition, is the agreement written, signed and published on day one?

Each is a document with a date. This publication will ask for all three.

Sources and further reading

This explainer is based on the ANC’s 2026 Local Government Elections Manifesto, Masakhe: Let Us Build, Action Five (pages 43 to 48) and its coalition-reform section, on this desk’s commitment-by-commitment review of the document, and on records previously reported for Nelson Mandela Bay.

• Download the manifesto: Masakhe, Let Us Build (PDF, 65 pages)
• The People’s Register: How the ANC Plans to Eliminate Unfunded Municipal Budgets
• The People’s Register: What Masakhe’s First 100 Days Will Look Like in Your Ward