1. Use the elections to build working-class organisation
The 2026 local government elections are taking place more than two years after the formation of the Government of National Unity following the ANC’s historic loss of its overall majority for the first time since 1994. Having come together in common purpose to provide continuity in the administration of the neo-liberal capitalist programme of the previous thirty years, the GNU partners have prioritised intensifying fiscal restraint, thus increasing the burden of the crisis on working-class people, whilst weakening labour laws. Their disagreements over this or that issue and particularities of policies are secondary. They cannot conceal their common commitment to the capitalist economic foundations for mass unemployment, poverty, widening inequality, rising crime and the collapse of public services.
Far from the promised economic, political and social stability, under the GNU the economic, social and political crisis that led to its formation has deepened. In its short two-year existence, this coalition of the rejected has predictably failed to “unite the nation” of working-class slaves with their capitalist slave masters. Instead, by legitimising xenophobia, the GNU has summoned the demons of its blood relatives, racism and tribalism, from the grave of apartheid and superimposed these re-ignited racial tensions on accelerated polarisation between the classes.
4th November 2026 could thus mark another decisive stage in the ANC’s political decline, underlining the lack of independent working-class political representation. Writing in the Daily Maverick, Mondli Makhanya predicted that November’s elections would drive the second-last nail into its political coffin, with the final nail following in the 2029 general election. Whether events follow that timetable will depend on the struggles and political developments ahead, but the prediction captures the depth of the crisis confronting a party whose liberation credentials have been consumed by its record in government. For the ANC, 4th November 2026 will serve, as in 2024, as the political equivalent of a fathometer—an instrument for measuring depth at sea—to confirm how much more deeply its electoral support has sunk.
Participation in the 2021 local government elections dropped to approximately 45% of registered voters. When considered against the total number of people eligible to vote, regardless of whether they had registered or not, only about three in every ten eligible adults voted in the previous local elections. Using the rounded figures of 27.67 million registered voters (out of 41.4 million eligible voters) of whom 58% cast their ballots, only 38.7% of the eligible population voted for the 18 parties in parliament. The 10 GNU parties collectively received only a portion of those votes. Its parliamentary majority therefore rests on the support of a minority of the eligible voting population. It is in that sense a minority government.
The mood in the country is, if anything, far more angry as the weight of the crisis presses down on the working class like a boulder with a sharpened point of contact on their backs. Whereas the predominant mood in 2021 and 2024 was to punish the ANC by not voting in the mistaken belief that this would oust it, these elections suggest a lesson learned. Withdrawing the vote and abstaining from elections merely creates the opportunity for parties unable to govern on their own to do so together. For the smaller ones in particular, this is the only way to seize opportunities of cabinet and portfolio committee positions at all levels of government, with all the salaries, benefits and prestige that come with them.
One of the features of the 2024 general elections was the active intervention of big business. The strategists of capital recognised that their main instrument, the ANC, was facing electoral humiliation, spent millions sponsoring new capitalist formations like Rise Mzansi and Build One SA, alongside continued financing of existing capitalist parties like the DA and newer parties like the xenophobic ActionSA and the Patriotic Alliance, to serve as capitalist props for the ANC.
There is now, at least in a segment of the working-class electorate, a feeling that it is necessary to actively intervene on the electoral plane. This is reflected in the huge increase in the number of contestants and parties. The Independent Electoral Commission reports that more than 500 political parties will contest the 2026 elections. The IEC’s September certification recorded 136,790 candidates, compared with 95,427 in 2021, an increase of more than 40%, although the number of council seats had increased only marginally.
There is no shortage of opportunists, careerists and those driven by the desire for self-enrichment in the cohort of contestants in 2026. But the proliferation of parties and contestants reflects at the same time a search for representation for the working class outside the established parties. This crowded electoral field includes established parties, newer political formations and independent candidates, among them people seeking to give expression to genuine community struggles.
It is necessary to point out, however, that important as this phenomenon is in marking, at least in some cases, the entry onto the political plane by genuine working-class activists and formations, it is at this stage less than even a first step. There is as yet no mass-based political party representing the interests of the working class as a whole. Working-class struggles continue to take place in silos despite their common grievances and demands across the country.
The limits of changing representatives
Genuine community candidates can expose corruption, challenge official secrecy and give public expression to demands ignored by established parties. Their election can provide useful positions from which to support struggle, but sincerity and commitment alone cannot overcome the constraints imposed on local government.
Councils operate within a national economic framework that restricts funding, demands cost recovery and encourages the commercialisation of public provision. Representatives confronting a deteriorating water network, a housing backlog or widespread inability to pay for electricity will encounter pressures that cannot be resolved through administrative competence alone. Municipalities remain dependent on decisions made elsewhere, while land, credit, construction and investment are substantially controlled by private interests pursuing profit.
Where no party commands a majority, community representatives will also face demands to enter coalition agreements in exchange for positions, promises or limited concessions. Without a common programme and organised support outside the council, even sincere activists can be drawn into bargains resembling those through which the GNU was assembled, accepting responsibility for policies they entered politics to oppose.
This danger places a responsibility on the organisations supporting them. Representatives require a democratically agreed mandate, structures capable of holding them accountable and a movement prepared to mobilise when institutional pressures obstruct community demands. Otherwise, electoral success can become the means through which another generation of community leaders is absorbed into administering the crisis.
The MWP’s Community Platform and Programme of Action proposes a basis for overcoming this danger by connecting electoral intervention to the building of independent working-class organisation. The unification of community struggles on a common platform and programme of action will not only strengthen the struggles themselves; it will also serve to assemble the forces for taking the struggle onto the political plane—towards a mass working-class party on a socialist programme.
A common programme rooted in community needs
The platform brings together demands for reliable water and sanitation, affordable electricity, decent housing, functioning clinics, public transport and permanent employment. These provide a common basis for struggles presently fought in isolation, enabling communities to identify the policies and interests connecting their experiences.
Municipal workers and residents have a particular interest in acting together. Workers confronting vacancies, inadequate equipment and outsourcing face the same erosion of public capacity that leaves residents with broken infrastructure and failing services. Joint campaigns can expose how public money is diverted through contractors and consultants while the permanent workforce and technical capacity required to maintain services are weakened.
Community Needs Budgets (drawn up by communities themselves independently calculating the cost of housing, health, education, womens’ shelters, rehabilitation and recreational facilities etc) can give these campaigns concrete content. Residents and workers should identify what must be repaired, built, staffed and funded, demand access to municipal accounts and contracts, and challenge priorities that protect private profit while denying essential provision. Such work can strengthen the struggle against corruption while demonstrating the necessity for struggle against budget cuts and adequate funding at a national level, for insourcing the rebuilding of public capacity are necessary.
The defence of every resident must form part of this programme. Communities cannot build the strength required to win services while allowing people to be excluded or intimidated because of nationality. Joint struggles over housing, employment and public provision should unite South African and migrant workers around common demands, challenging employers and politicians who benefit from their division.
Begin organising through the forces that exist
Civics, shop-steward structures, socialist organisations, migrant organisations, women’s groups and youth formations should convene local assemblies to discuss the platform, identify urgent demands and agree responsibilities for common action. Where democratic community structures already function, the task is to strengthen and connect them; where they have weakened, assemblies can elect accountable committees to carry the work forward.
Existing organisations should participate through mandated representatives while retaining their identity. Regular open meetings, transparent finances and the right to replace representatives are essential to ensuring that coordination remains under the control of those taking part. Women, young people, migrant residents and the unemployed must help shape the programme and decisions from the outset.
Local structures should elect delegates to municipal coordinating meetings, enabling neighbouring communities to combine demands directed at the same council. Joint action around a budget, support for a community facing cut-offs or a coordinated campaign for repairs can establish the experience and confidence required for wider organisation. Provincial links and a representative national gathering can develop from this work towards a United Socialist Civic Federation.
Organised labour must contribute its resources and power to this process. Shop stewards should connect workplace branches with community structures, while unions place their premises, communications and organising experience at the service of common campaigns. Rebuilding these relationships would begin restoring the wider working-class role weakened through decades of political subordination.
An independent intervention in the elections
The MWP will not stand its own candidates in these local government elections. We call on genuine civic and community candidates emerging from struggle to adopt the Community Platform and Programme of Action and place their campaigns under the democratic control of the communities they seek to represent.
Candidates must be judged through their record, programme and accountability, since an “independent” label offers no protection against business influence, personal ambition or xenophobic reaction. Open meetings should examine candidates’ interests, agree mandates and establish arrangements for reporting back and scrutinising their conduct.
Representatives should disclose their income and dealings with private interests, refuse secret arrangements for positions and accept the community’s right to withdraw its mandate and endorsement. They should take only the wage of a skilled worker, directing the balance of their council income towards democratically controlled organisation and struggle.
Council representation should help expose decisions, open budgets and contracts to scrutiny, and advance demands supported by action outside. Where institutional limits obstruct a mandate, representatives must report those obstacles openly and organise with communities to challenge them.
Whether candidates win or lose, the campaign should leave stronger organisation behind. The crisis will continue beyond polling day, and the capacity to enforce demands will depend on structures that remain active after the ballot papers have been counted.
2. Fill the political vacuum with a socialist alternative
The need for this initiative arises from a crisis of working-class political representation that has allowed reactionary forces to claim the mantle of opposition. Communities continue to protest, workers resist retrenchments and attacks on wages, women organise against violence, and young people demand education and employment. Yet the absence of sustained coordination and a common socialist programme leave these struggles fragmented.
The vacuum concerns political direction as much as organisation. Where the left fails to explain the crisis and organise a way forward, the right supplies its own explanation and recruits around it. Xenophobia has become a particularly dangerous expression of this process in South Africa.
The retreat of the left and the containment of labour
The collapse of the former Soviet Union contributed to a profound loss of confidence across sections of the international left. Accepting capitalist propaganda that the collapse of Stalinist bureaucratic regimes demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, some lost confidence in the working class as the only social force capable of overthrowing capitalism and others abandoned the idea that socialist transformation is possible altogether. The result is the narrowing of their ambitions to reform the capitalist system increasingly treated as permanent.
In South Africa, this retreat intersected with the transition and the incorporation of sections of the left into government, policy institutions and advisory structures. Civic leaders who had emerged through rent boycotts and struggles for services entered councils and legislatures, while independent community organisations weakened or were subordinated to the ANC. Residents were encouraged to await delivery from above as the structures through which they had exercised collective power declined.
Organised labour’s imprisonment in the Tripartite Alliance was central to this process. The Cosatu and SACP leaderships bound workers to the ANC while its government implemented privatisation, outsourcing, retrenchments and austerity. The promise that workers could redirect the ANC justified continued support for a government attacking their interests, while the National Democratic Revolution supplied ideological cover for postponing the struggle for socialism.
The consequences extended throughout the working class. Cosatu’s capacity to link workplace struggles with communities, women and youth was weakened precisely when a united response became most urgent. Whilst the rise of the SA Federation of Trade Unions promised a revival of ideological and political independence the separation has so far remained only organisational. Consequently, there is as yet no sustained political independence and unity in action needed so urgently across the wider labour movement.
Militant workers, socialist activists and independent community organisations have continued to resist these developments. Their persistence provides forces from which an alternative can be built, but overcoming fragmentation requires a common initiative rooted in the struggles already taking place.
Recognise xenophobia as right-wing politics
Sections of the left readily identify anti-migrant agitation in Europe and the United States with the right, yet hesitate to recognise the same ideological content in South African campaigns claiming to defend poor communities. The class character of these campaigns becomes clear when their programme, methods and consequences are examined.
Xenophobia substitutes nationality for class as the dividing line in society, encouraging South African workers to identify with South African employers against migrant workers. It offers exclusion and repression as answers to deprivation while leaving capitalist ownership and exploitation untouched. The participation of impoverished people does not alter the reactionary direction in which their anger is being organised.
This is the ideological connection with the right internationally, despite differences in history and organisational form. Anger generated by capitalist crisis is redirected towards a vulnerable population, while those controlling wealth escape responsibility. The unemployed are encouraged to blame migrants for the absence of jobs, patients are turned against one another in understaffed clinics, and families without homes are told another desperate household is responsible.
The government’s failures are thereby given a foreign face. Employers benefit from the resulting division, particularly where migrants’ insecurity is used to impose lower wages and obstruct organisation. The persecution of one section weakens the ability of the entire working class to fight.
Labour leaders reinforce this danger when they condemn violence while conceding the xenophobes’ claims about migrants causing pressure on services. Such formulations lend working-class authority to the explanation through which reaction prepares its mobilisation. Genuine anger at deprivation must be directed towards the policies, ownership interests and employer practices responsible.
The inadequate organised response has helped embolden the right. Unions and community organisations must challenge its propaganda through workplace education, public assemblies and peaceful collective mobilisation, while supporting those threatened and demanding accountability for attacks. The platform’s common struggles over services, housing and jobs provide the material basis for winning people away from reactionary explanations.
Towards unity under a United Socialist Civic Federation
Filling the vacuum requires an independent movement capable of combining immediate struggles with a programme for transforming society. The Community Platform offers a starting point through which residents can organise around their needs, establish democratic control over representatives and connect their struggles with the power of workers in production and public services.
Those struggles continually raise the question of ownership. Banks control credit, property interests control land and development, and major companies determine investment according to profitability. Public ownership of the commanding sectors of the economy under democratic workers’ control and management would enable resources to be directed through a socialist plan towards housing, employment, infrastructure and public provision.
Workers’ democracy is indispensable to that programme, ensuring that economic and political decisions remain subject to those whose labour sustains society. Through participation in struggle, democratic organisation and political education, the working class can develop the confidence and capacity required to undertake a socialist reconstruction and development of society.
As we argued in the introduction to the Cosatu series, the working class must reassert its class, ideological and political independence. What the militant labour movement once represented as a virtual workers’ party must become a real mass workers’ party on a socialist programme, uniting:
- The workplace under a Socialist Confederation of Trade Unions.
- Communities under a United Socialist Civic Federation.
- Women under a Socialist Women’s Movement.
- Students and youth under a Marxist Youth and Student Movement.
We call on community activists, shop stewards, civic organisations, socialist formations, women and young people to discuss the Community Platform, agree local programmes and establish the coordination needed to act together. The elections provide an opportunity to begin this work, building organisation capable of confronting municipal collapse, defeating xenophobic division and advancing an independent working-class alternative to the parties administering capitalist crisis. Out of this unity in struggle can emerge a United Socialist Civic Federation. This will not only strengthen struggles that have taken place in silos, but it will also at the same time assemble the forces for a mass working class party on a socialist programme.