What is Masakhe?
Masakhe: Let Us Build is the manifesto of the African National Congress for the 2026 local government elections. President Cyril Ramaphosa launched it at Riverside Park in Diepsloot on 23 August 2026. The document runs to 65 pages and arranges its commitments under six action areas: basic services and infrastructure, jobs and the local economy, safety and resilience, municipal finances, capable and ethical government, and public participation.
The name is a call to build together, and the document is addressed to a specific sphere of government: municipalities. It is not a national programme. Its commitments bind ANC-led councils, and its deadline architecture, from the first 30 days to a full delivery report in 2031, is built for the municipal term. The People’s Register has examined each action area in this series, piece by piece.
When are the municipal elections?
Election day is Wednesday 4 November 2026. Voters in every municipality elect the councils that govern local services for the next five years: water, sanitation, electricity distribution, roads, refuse, housing land and local economic development.
The manifesto’s first deadlines begin from the day a new council takes office, not from election day. Its earliest commitments fall due within 30 days, and its heaviest programme falls inside the first 100 days. Readers can follow that timeline in our 100-days explainer.
What does the manifesto promise for my ward?
Four things, each with a date attached. A functioning ward committee, established within 100 days. A councillor who holds a public ward meeting every month. A Ward Programme of Action agreed with residents within 30 days of the council taking office. And a Ward Delivery Schedule, published within 100 days, naming the projects in the ward, the department responsible for each, the value of each project and its delivery year.
The Ward Delivery Schedule is the manifesto’s answer to a frustration residents know well: projects that stall with no one to ask. The schedule is designed to name the responsible department even when a project is funded by another sphere of government, so that a resident holding the schedule knows exactly where a stalled project sits.
What happens in the first 100 days?
The manifesto opens with a 100-day programme rather than a vision statement. Its headline items: automatic enrolment of qualifying households on the indigent register begins, a pothole repair programme starts, ward committees are constituted, the Umhlaba Wethu land and buildings register begins compilation, and senior managers are appointed to critical municipal posts within 120 days.
Within 60 days, the mayor must table a State of the Municipality Report setting out the governance, financial and service-delivery position the new council has inherited. The full sequence, from day 30 to day 100, is set out in Masakhe: Your First 100 Days.
What is the 8% maintenance promise?
Every ANC-led municipality must spend at least 8% of the value of its infrastructure assets on maintaining those assets, every year, and must publish the maintenance plan that shows it. The rule exists because deferred maintenance is the quiet cause of most service failures: a pipe not maintained becomes a burst, a road not maintained becomes a pothole programme ten times the price.
The commitment matters for Nelson Mandela Bay in particular, where infrastructure renewal has lagged for years. The full analysis, including what the rule means for the metro’s ageing networks, is in The ANC’s 8% Maintenance Promise: What It Means.
Will the ANC create municipal jobs?
The manifesto commits an ANC-led government to one million work, training and enterprise opportunities over the municipal term, and to 10,000 apprenticeships, learnerships and graduate internships inside municipalities themselves.
The programme spans public employment through the EPWP and Community Work Programme, enterprise support through one-stop local economic development desks and enterprise hubs, and procurement participation targets: 40% of municipal spend to women-owned businesses, 20% to youth-owned and 3% to disability-owned enterprises by 2031. How the numbers are built, and who qualifies, is explained in One Million Opportunities, Explained.
What is Umhlaba Wethu?
Umhlaba Wethu, our land, is a public register of municipal land and buildings that every ANC-led municipality must complete within 100 days of taking office, ward by ward.
The register serves two purposes. It makes the municipal property portfolio visible to residents, and it creates the factual base for releasing well-located land for housing and mixed-use development. A municipality that does not know what it owns cannot plan where people should live.
How much free water and electricity will households receive?
The manifesto commits every ANC-led municipality to automatic enrolment of qualifying households on the indigent register, so that eligible households receive free basic water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal without having to queue to prove poverty every year. Specified grant recipients and vulnerable households are enrolled as of right, with the register updated quarterly.
The monthly amounts are set through each municipality’s indigent policy, within the national free basic services framework, and the manifesto commits councils to increase free basic electricity for qualifying households. The entitlement, in other words, is guaranteed in the manifesto; the quantity is set locally, and must be published.
How quickly must the municipality answer complaints?
Within two working days, in writing, through a case-management system that logs every report from a resident. The manifesto pairs the acknowledgement rule with a monthly ward repair clock: a published count of reported faults and the share resolved, with at least 85% of reported cases required to be closed out.
The two commitments work together. Acknowledgement without repair is an apology on a loop; the repair clock is what makes the acknowledgement mean something. Both are examined in our reporting on Action Six.
What changes for municipal finances?
Five targets carry the finance action area. Unfunded budgets are to be eliminated within two years. A billing audit must be completed in the first year. Debt owed to Eskom and the water boards, and arrears owed to municipalities, must fall by at least 30%. Suppliers must be paid within 30 days. And at least half of municipalities must reach clean or unqualified audits by 2031.
For a metro whose recent budgets have been assessed as unfunded, the sequence is the story: audit the billing first, then fund the budget, then hold the audit line. The commitments are unpacked in How the ANC Plans to Eliminate Unfunded Municipal Budgets.
How can residents hold an ANC council to all of this?
The manifesto publishes its own checklist. A State of the Municipality Report within 60 days. Quarterly Municipal Delivery Scorecards published for every ward. An independent mid-term review of delivery in 2028. A full Manifesto Delivery Report in 2031, recording what was promised, what was delivered, what was not, and why.
Between the reports sit the instruments residents can use directly: the monthly ward meeting, the published Ward Delivery Schedule, the repair clock and the recall of councillors who fail performance assessments. The calendar is the manifesto’s deepest departure from its predecessors, and the reason this publication treats the document as a reporting agenda rather than a campaign brochure. Read the side-by-side with the 2021 manifesto in 2026 versus 2021.
| Number | What it commits |
|---|---|
| 4 November 2026 | Election day for all municipal councils |
| 30 days | Ward Programme of Action agreed with residents |
| 60 days | State of the Municipality Report tabled |
| 100 days | Ward committees, Ward Delivery Schedules and the Umhlaba Wethu register |
| 120 days | Critical municipal management posts filled |
| 8% | Minimum annual maintenance spend, as a share of asset value |
| 2 working days | Complaint acknowledgement, in writing |
| 85% | Monthly repair-clock resolution target |
| One million | Work, training and enterprise opportunities over the term |
| 10,000 | Municipal apprenticeships, learnerships and internships |
| 30% | Reduction in municipal debt and arrears |
| 50% by 2031 | Municipalities on clean or unqualified audits |
Read the document for yourself
The questions above are answered from the manifesto’s own text. The full 65-page document, with every commitment, target and date, is available for download.
Sources and further reading
This piece answers questions from the manifesto text and the movement’s public record.