After having registered a 2021 local government election result which has placed ActionSA in the top four political parties in South Africa, the focus now shifts to being a party with a national footprint in all nine provinces.
The South African political market has seen the reasonable and rational center, in which the majority of voters reside, being vacated by the established parties moving to the left and right to stem their electoral losses. This market of voters has been abandoned, it is racially diverse, shares a common set of values for South Africa, and is amenable to ActionSA.
ActionSA’s Senate has concluded its strategic planning, publicly announcing the objective of emerging from the 2024 national and provincial elections as the 2nd biggest party in South Africa. In order to accomplish this objective, ActionSA must expand its operational capacity to increase both the recognition and favourability of our brand.
The realities of South African society make this task extraordinarily resource and labour intensive with so many South Africans still requiring direct voter engagement. While ActionSA competes with political parties that receive their share in R1.3 billion in state sponsored party funding each year, ActionSA is entirely reliant upon private fundraising until the party achieves representation in the national legislature.
ActionSA is a political party registered in terms of the Electoral Commissions Act 73 of 1998 and was established on 29 August 2020.
The organization is governed by a constitution which sets out the party structures, decision-making processes, criteria for membership and grounds for discipline.
The Senate is ActionSA’s national executive body that comprises of 24 members. It includes members of the national leadership, a provincial chairperson for each of the nine provinces of South Africa as well as professional South Africans. It is a diverse body that proudly and publicly mirrors the diversity of South Africa.
ActionSA contested its first election, in the form of a local government election, in November 2021, registering a result which places the party within the major established parties in South Africa. Despite contesting only 6 municipalities our of 278, ActionSA came 6th in the country.
Of great significance is that ActionSA became the first political party in South Africa to achieve equal levels of support from South Africans living in suburban, township, CBD and informal settlement settings. Perhaps of greatest importance in the context of South African political environment, ActionSA won considerable support from the governing ANC, placing it into the opposition benches everywhere it contested elections. In Gauteng province (the economic capital of South Africa), ActionSA reduced the ANC to 34% support down from the 50% achieved in 2019 placing this most strategic province within reach of a likely coalition alternative.
The South African political market is characterized by the established political parties being either in a state of decline (ANC and DA) or stagnation (EFF) along with declining voter participation levels as more people feel alienated by the political establishment.
The ANC’s decline has been exponential in nature with the most polls putting the ANC as low as 37% nationally.
This is primarily driven by continuous load shedding arising from a sustained energy crisis and policy paralysis within governing structures arising from ANC factionalism. The ANC has moved to the left of the political spectrum to mitigate the electoral threat posed by the EFF and other leftist parties.
The ANC is also likely to lose its provincial control of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State in 2024.
The DA’s decline, although more moderate in magnitude, has seen the party hemorrhage support both in terms of its support among black voters as well as in terms of Afrikaans-speaking support to the VF Plus.
Consequently, polls suggest the DA is likely to fall to 18% support in the upcoming 2024 elections, unable to capitilise on the torrent of support leaving the ANC.
The EFF remains stagnant at 10%, largely owing to the extremist positioning of the party alienating potential voters and polarizing sentiment either strongly in favour or strongly against the party.
The EFF continues to alienate potential support by adopting policy positions that are at odds with the sentiment of their voter market and by its positioning relative to the ANC.
A series of new entrants into the political market must be noted and monitored with the understanding that any prospect of these ventures amounting to much support due to the high failure rates of new parties alongside the dual legal impediments of the Political Party Funding Act and the Electoral Laws Amendment Bill (the latter intending to impose a threshold for representation in Parliament).
With no party likely to achieve a result remotely close to a majority in the 2024 elections, multi-party coalitions have become the future of South African politics. The reality is that many of the local government manifestations of this reality have not generated positive experiences for South Africans.
The consequence of a future of coalitions is the orientation of the 2024 national and provincial elections around the question of whether a party will work with the ANC or whether a party will work with other parties to provide an alternative to the ANC. Political parties that seek to provide an alternative to the ANC have a far greater and growing market of support to appeal to while those who publicly align with the ANC will likely face electoral declines for alienating support bases cultivated on the notion of opposing the ANC’s many documented failures.
ActionSA concluded a massive public engagement on this question which found that most South Africans want to see ActionSA enter coalitions to remove the ANC, to drive service delivery and to combat corruption (these two latter points are regarded to be contingent upon the removal of the ANC).
This exercise also produced an understanding of which political parties South Africans want ActionSA to work with in coalitions, something for which ActionSA has begun a programme of bi-laterals to strengthen relationships with these parties.
The DA has made a number of pronouncements in recent times indicating that it may be willing to go into a coalition with the ANC and appear to be preparing their constituents for such an inevitability.
This direction is predicated on the notion that by providing the ANC the majority voters will deny it in 2024 the DA can exact demands from within the ANC – a severely discredited notion when you consider the failure of reformists within the ANC being unable to accomplish this task.
The EFF has, similarly, begun to align itself to the ANC in a number of local government municipalities across South Africa in order to address their lack of a track record in government. Given the party’s history, this too is likely to alienate a significant portion of its support base which arose from an acrimonious expulsion from the ANC.
ActionSA’s alignment to a multi-party coalition alternative to the ANC positions it well within the rapidly expanding electoral market in South Africa that has lost faith in the ANC.
It is joined by parties like the IFP, VF Plus, ACDP and others who are aligned to this agenda and others who will join because it is electrically beneficial to do so. Should the DA align itself with this group of parties, there is a viable prospect of coalition in 2024 nationally and within various provinces.
ActionSA’s Senate has held two strategic planning sessions since the November 2021 local government elections in which we have defined our strategic choices towards the 2024 national and provincial elections.
Our strategy is principally informed by the political dictum that a successful political party must be on message, in volume, over time. In this respect our strategy is distilled down to two essential components: the message and the delivery method.
ActionSA’s messaging framework has been developed with a view of positioning ActionSA effectively to soft voters from other parties (voters amenable to changing their vote) as well as the many South Africans who have given up on participating in the political system.
Our message must achieve a balance between proactive communication that tells South Africans about ActionSA’s offer and reactive communication to the litany of issues arising in the South African political environment which constantly requires communication that positions ActionSA effectively.
On 6 February 2023, at the factory where his business success began in 1985, ActionSA President Herman Mashaba launched The South African Dream, a vision for South Africa visually depicting what life for South Africans could be with the removal of the ANC in 2024. The South African Dream becomes the golden thread grounding all ActionSA communications in a positive, solution-oriented vision for South Africa. Its contents will be converted into campaign material that will be delivered to South Africans across the nine provinces over the coming months and, critically, it becomes the foundation of a much larger policy suite.
ActionSA has already begun its work on a much larger policy suite with the understanding that a public facing process will be required that develops practical and tangible solutions to the multitude of challenges faced by South Africans. While our policy suite will cover the full spectrum of subjects, it is necessary to focus energy on the priority areas on which ActionSA must differentiate ourselves from established political parties:
ActionSA will embark upon a policy process that will begin with an expert-led process that will be broadcast live to all South Africans. This process will see professional, non-affiliated South Africans participating in the above list of policy discussions.
The intention will be ActionSA-facilitated process of ECD practitioners, school principals, teachers, education experts and academics leading a discussion on how to fix the education system in South Africa. Similarly we will publicly facilitate policemen and women, detectives, prosecutors, judges, and private security experts in policy engagements on law, order and justice.
These expert-led engagements are intended to achieve a differentiation from other political parties in terms of producing a professionalized rather than politicised policy process as well as policy outcomes that are inherently practical and relatable to all South Africans.
Our policy process will culminate in a national policy conference in September 2023 which is intended to be a showcase of the party’s size and substance – both of which are important from demonstrating internal cohesion in the developmental phase of a political party.
The policies arising from this value chain of processes will be distilled down to the level of manifestos and blueprints that will form the core of our message for the 2024 national and provincial elections.
ActionSA is undergoing constant development of our ability to deliver our message through an increasingly fragmented marketing environment and a complex and highly varied political landscape. This can readily be understood in terms of the air war and ground war.
In terms of the air war, our capacity in terms of conventional and digital communications is well developed at this point in ActionSA’s development. That capacity has been extended beyond the layer of national communications into the provinces where regional and local media consumption is significantly larger. Our communications is benefitting significantly from the diversification and deepening of leadership with more credible, high-profile leaders able to augment the communication output of ActionSA President Herman Mashaba.
In terms of the ground war, ActionSA is focussing on building branch and volunteer structures in every one of the 4468 wards across South Africa. This is an essential pre-requisite to a party’s ability to deliver direct voter contact across the nine provinces of South Africa in the relevant languages and addressing the most relevant issues to each community.
In this regard, ActionSA has amassed 145 000 members and branches (of a minimum of 50 members) in 25% of the wards in South Africa.
These structures have already begun with the rollout of the first campaign dubbed Ready4Action – a campaign aimed at driving name recognition for ActionSA across the country. Party branch structures have delivered this campaign through locally planned and implemented events activations reaching millions of South Africans.
In order to enhance the political output of our branch structures, ActionSA is finalising the design of a political academy – a three branch induction, orientation and training programme. One of the key outcomes of this exercise is branch structures that convert members to volunteers and achieve self-sufficient planning and implementation localised programmes of political activity.
ActionSA’s strategic focus has been to shift from an organisation that achieved well in 6 municipalities across South Africa to a party that will have an impact in all nine provinces. This produces an operational requirement to grow the capacity of the organisation.
Already ActionSA has capacitated each of the nine provinces with a Provincial Chairperson to lead the structures and headline the campaigns, along with a Provincial Communications Manager and a Provincial Campaigns Manager. The advent of this capacity ensures that ActionSA is able to intensify its presence and relevance in every province and to achieve relevance through fighting for communities on issues that matter to them and in languages that resonate with them.
ActionSA has developed a communications framework that ensures that identified leaders act as spokespersons on behalf on behalf of the party across the layers of issues and geographies. While Provincial Chairpersons and, ultimately, premier candidates will headline provincial campaigns, issue spokespersons are being identified that will position ActionSA on national issues emanating from Parliament.
A programme of set piece events each year is combined with an issue driving profile for each province which lays out the political issues of greatest concern to residents of that province and these issues are prosecuted through the array of communication platforms.
All communications will be underpinned by the vision articulated in The South African Dream and through the policy solutions that emanate out of the policy conference later this year.
ActionSA’s focus lies in the building of structures that are capacitated to deliver our message throughout the nine provinces. Much has already been said about the approach and achievements in this regard.
Beyond the priority of establishing and capacitating volunteer structures, the ground war operations must be understood in terms of a series of marketing campaigns, delivered directly to voters through trained volunteers, effectively layering the knowledge and favourability of ActionSA.
The Ready4Action campaign has already been in effect for 2 months and is driving name recognition of ActionSA across the country through campaign materials and message scripts aimed at bridging any gaps of knowledge about ActionSA, its leadership and our values.
Within the next few months, ActionSA will begin its campaign around The South African Dream which will convert that vision for South Africa into campaign materials and message scripts once again delivered to street corners and households throughout the nine provinces.
These two campaigns are foundational in terms of their focus on achieving a baseline understanding of ActionSA as the first political alternative to the ANC in 2024. This foundation of recognition of ActionSA will be essential to our ability to build favourability in the months that follow.
Following the policy conference in July 2023, a series of burst campaigns will be delivered along the lines of the policy buckets listed above (burst campaign referring to a short, high-intensity campaign). Each burst campaign will focus on communicating ActionSA’s policy positioning as it relates to these major issues in South Africa. Through direct voter engagement, and supported by campaign materials, ActionSA’s practical and relatable policy solution blueprints will be delivered at the level of communities, streets and homes.
Essential to the success of any party, especially in a declining voter turnout scenario, is its ability to generate differential turnout – a relatively higher turnout of their own supporters relative to the supporters of other parties. This is critical for any non-ANC aligned grouping of parties given a pattern of ANC supporters expressing their discontent through staying away from the polls.
An online platform has been developed which combines the information from the South African voters roll and the Home Affairs population roll and provides the platform for contact information, issue identification and political affiliation. This platform allows for a comprehensive voter management system to manage the party and voter interface.
Canvassing operations conducted telephonically or by foot canvassing will populate the required information associated with each data record and the identification of issues for each voter allows for micro-targeting campaigns where ActionSA policy solutions are targeted to individual voters on the basis of the issues of greatest importance to each voter.
Over the next 12 months lists of South Africans are developed that can be turned out to register or vote through a variety of engagements all for the purpose of achieving a differential turnout.
In the context of failed governance, ActionSA will need to use strategic litigation to ensure that the issues we drive are of great importance to South Africans, and are met with tangible success in the form of court rulings that compel government to act. Already ActionSA is involved in the following examples below:
By-elections, strategically selected to drive the narrative of growth and momentum, are an important component of ActionSA’s operational plan.
ActionSA has contested four by-elections after the 2021 local government elections which are helpful in revealing the subsequent growth of the party.
In the City of Tshwane, ActionSA increased its share of the vote from 6% to 22% elevating from the 5th to the 2nd biggest party in that ward. In the City of Johannesburg, ActionSA grew from 12% to 22%. In Ward 43 Nelson Mandela Bay (a township on the outskirts of the municipality in the Eastern Cape) ActionSA achieved 8% of the vote in its first election in the Eastern Cape. In a rural township in Limpopo, Polokwane Ward 10, ActionSA recorded 10% support in its first election in this province. ActionSA contestation of a by-election in Nongoma in the Zululand District of KwaZulu-Natal achieved success with the party registering 10.2% support, finishing 3rd to beat the NFP-aligned independent candidate and the EFF.
What these by-elections reveal is the potential for ActionSA being considerably high for a party whose name recognition is relatively new, especially outside of the urban centers. This demonstrates the extent to which concerted campaigning to drive name recognition and favourability can increase this potential to the point that the 2024 objectives set by the Senate can be accomplished.
Momentum is a significant driver of electoral choice in South Africa with the psychology being to back winners. In this respect ActionSA continues with a programme of attracting high-profile South Africans into our ranks, ranging from those with national profiles to those who are impactful within localised settings.
Having recruited Provincial Chairpersons like Athol Trollip, Kwena Mangope and Zwakele Mncwango (all of whom have a national profile) our attention now shifts to influential South Africans across key subject portfolios – the collective of which would present a shadow cabinet.
Already there are a number of such announcements lined up for 2023.
With the increasing withdrawal of so many South Africans from the political process it is evident that electoral success is contingent, at least in part, on ActionSA animating this growing market.
At the 2019 General Elections 22.4 million South Africans of voting age did not vote compared to the 17.6 million who did cast ballots. In the 2021 local government elections the number of eligible voters who did not vote rose to 27.4 million compared to the 11.6 million who did vote.
Market research is critical to understanding these South Africans and determining what is required to animate them with a sense of hope within South African politics.
The advent of continuous online IEC voter registration has empowered political parties to register voters in between formal election cycles and registration weekends. In order to seize on this opportunity ActionSA has initiated the following plans:
ActionSA remains vulnerable financially as a direct consequence of the Political Party Funding Act and the state sponsored funding exclusively of those parties represented in Parliament. ActionSA must compete against established parties that can plan their overheads against millions of rands of guaranteed, recurring monthly funding. This places ActionSA at a considerable disadvantage because it must grapple with the complexity of long-term financial planning on the basis of volatile in-flows of financial resources.
ActionSA’s growth and performance has, undoubtedly, produced an environment in which more and more South Africans are coming forward to fund ActionSA. Notwithstanding this, the Political Party Funding Act imposes a dual challenge to fund election campaigns through the imposition of annual limits for donors and the requirement of disclosures for any amount above the low threshold of R100 000.
The impact of these two provisions limit the supply of donors who are willing to make donations above R100 000 while simultaneously limiting the impact of donors willing to make disclosable donations to R15 million per annum cap.
An opportunity exists in terms of the terms of how a donor is defined in terms of the Political Party Funding Act in which a natural donor is deemed a donor by way of a separate identity and bank account and a juristic donor is any individual entity defined in terms of the Company’s Act 71 of 2008 or the Trust Property Control Act 57 of 1988. This means that the network of family members and entities around a single person can collectively produce donations exceeding the individual limit. In the context of the above articulated limitations of the Political Party Funding Act, this is the only plausible way to fund both the annual operating budget and the election war chest.
Operating in financial year cycles from 1 April to 31 March, this affords ActionSA 3 financial years in which to achieve both the funding of the annual operating budget and 2024 election war chest.
For the first time in South Africa’s democratic history, the ANC will fall significantly far enough below a majority that a new governing coalition is a certain outcome from the 2024 national and provincial elections. The only question is whether that governing coalition will achieve a reform agenda or whether it will take South Africa further down the path of a failed stated.
Amongst the grouping of parties aligned to a reform agenda, AtionSA stands alone both in terms of our ability to win support from the ANC and in terms of our ability to achieve a diverse, multi-racial support base to unite South Africans.
However, ActionSA can only accomplish this feat for South Africans if it is sufficiently funded to take its offer as the only real alternative to the ANC to every home, street and community in the nine provinces of South Africa.
ActionSA was formed in August 2020 by the former Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, to change the direction of South Africa by providing a credible alternative to a broken political system that has failed South Africans for many years since the dawn of South Africa’s democracy.
ActionSA’s foundations are grounded in The People’s Dialogue, a 9-month public engagement process which solicited the views of 2.4 million South Africans about the future of their country. Our focus is on Action that moves South Africa forward from an era of broken promises, corruption and failed government.
In 2021, ActionSA made history. Contesting just 6 out of 278 municipalities, we garnered 2,36% of the total vote, the 6th largest party, garnering over 550,000 votes.
An inclusive, prosperous and secure future for all South Africans in a country healed from its past.
We exist in service to the South African people by working to deliver governments at local, provincial and a national level that act effectively and decisively to their benefit.
ActionSA is proud of a leadership that reflects the diversity of our country.
Our leadership team comprises of individuals with political experience who left their previous parties because they stopped serving the people of South Africa and combines them with professionals from outside of the political environment.
From stability and success during the dark days of apartheid to his reluctant road to politics. This is the story of how our President, Herman Mashaba is taking the values of success he learned in business, and using them to change the face of South African politics.
National Chairperson of ActionSA, Author and Proud South African, Michael Beaumont was born and raised in Durban, and educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University.
Michael served 9 years as the Managing Director of the DA in KZN and Gauteng, and in 2016, Herman Mashaba appointed him as his chief of staff in the City of Johannesburg.
After the collapse of the Johannesburg coalition government in 2019, Michael co-founded The People’s Dialogue and ActionSA with Herman Mashaba and André Coetzee.
For more information on the full team, visit the ActionSA website via the categories below:
ActionSA marched to the offices of Police Minister, Bheki Cele, who should’ve been dismissed years ago for his incompetence, where we handed over a memorandum to demand that action be taken within the next three months to urgently address the continued decline in the quality of South African Police Stations.
Cele now faces a deadline: three months to enact meaningful change.
In recent weeks, South Africans have been continually confronted with the disintegration of the South African Police Service (SAPS). Incidents ranging from the brutal assaults by the SAPS’s VIP unit to Thabo Bester’s escape and the ongoing troubles with Zama Zamas in Riverlea are constant reminders of a system in decay. These are not isolated occurrences; rather, they paint a bleak picture of a police service failing to respond to emergencies or provide the necessary equipment.
ActionSA’s recent survey exposed some deeply troubling statistics:
As a party that staunchly upholds the rule of law, ActionSA’s demand is unambiguous. Minister Cele must devise and present an action plan within three months to reverse the troubling trend highlighted by South Africa’s escalating murder rate. Specifically, we are calling on the Minister to ensure:
The loss of trust in the police is not a baseless sentiment among South Africans. The alarming crime statistics reveal an unsettling reality: rising murder rates, increasing sexual violence, and escalating robbery with aggravating circumstances.
Despite these grim facts, ActionSA continues to applaud and support the many men and women in uniform who tirelessly and honorably serve to keep us safe. However, these dedicated officers are being failed by a politicized leadership, more concerned with self-interest and protecting the political elite than addressing the urgent needs of South Africans.
Join ActionSA as we persist in our fight to restore integrity, responsibility, and efficiency to the police service. Our march today is just one step in our unwavering commitment to creating a safer South Africa for all.
The by-election reaffirms that ActionSA continues on its growth trajectory, and is the only political party in South Africa which successfully manages to win support away from the ANC. This will be crucial as we enter the important 2024 national elections. In every single black voting district where the ANC previously dominated, ActionSA achieved double-digit growth at the expense of the ANC:
Our support at the Al Furqaan Islamic Centre has meant that ActionSA won this voting district from the ANC for the very first time – once again proving our ability to unseat the ANC in the heart of its previous strongholds.
While ActionSA managed to achieve double-digit growth in black voting districts, we achieved marginal growth in the coloured community of Ennerdale, which represented the largest voting districts. This led to the PA’s victory overall and we congratulate the PA and their candidate in this regard.
ActionSA will continue to work with our coloured communities to ensure that their voices, together with the voices of all residents, are heard and needs are addressed.
When ActionSA launched in 2020, we launched with the intention of being a political party in government. The City of Johannesburg Ward 7 by-elections are an important indicator on the road to achieving this goal, showing continued growth ahead of the 2024 elections to unseat the ANC.
ActionSA believes South African Youth should honour the legacy of those who died in the 1976 student uprising by registering to vote in the upcoming 2024 elections to remove the ANC and put South Africa back on a path of prosperity.
At the launch of ActionSA’s voter registration campaign at Thokoza Park, Soweto, on Youth Day today, we helped to register hundreds of new voters, and I shared that South African Youth have the power to reclaim their future. But they can only do that if they register to vote, and cast their ballots to remove the ANC.
Next year’s elections will be the first time since 1994 that the real opportunity exists to remove the ANC from power and start fixing South Africa to create a better life for the Youth today and generations to come.
We believe that the dreams and visions of the 1976 generation have not been achieved, and instead, the ANC have used South Africa’s democracy to enrich themselves and their cronies. The best way to honour those who have fought and died in the Soweto Uprising would be to register to vote to remove the ANC.
Too many people have fought and died for the right to participate in democracy in South Africa and that is why ActionSA believes Youth should use that right to ensure a better life for themselves and their children.
If voters do not participate in South Africa’s democracy, they enable the ANC to continue looting the country’s coffers and implementing policies which kill jobs and lead to worse service delivery for all, higher crime and poorer quality of life.
ActionSA, a party which values electoral reform to make politicians more accountable to the people they serve, will spend the months ahead registering unregistered voters to help convince them that an alternative to the current broken government is possible.
ActionSA, UDM and 17 others claimed victory by securing electricity supply to all South African public health establishments, schools and police stations, after we won Part A of our court case against the Minister of Public Enterprises and others.
The Pretoria High Court ruled that the Department of Enterprises, in conjunction with or without other Organs of State, must within 60 days take all reasonable steps to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to all public health establishments, schools and South African Police Service police stations across South Africa.
The legal victory ensures that communities across South Africa will no longer be subject to the failures of the ANC and Eskom, which have left our communities at their mercy when hospitals, police stations and schools lose electricity during increasing levels of load shedding.
The court case by ActionSA, UDM and 17 others seeks to, among others, declare the ANC-led government’s response to loadshedding as unconstitutional and breaching a number of fundamental constitutional rights. Part B is enrolled for hearing in September 2023.
After almost 15 years of loadshedding it is clear that the ANC government lacks the will to resolve the crisis, leaving South Africans in the dark. It is our belief that without urgent intervention by our Courts, the government will continue to let the ensuing crisis persist unabated.
ActionSA would like to thank the remainder of our legal for their tireless work on this matter – Adv. Bruce Dyke SC, who led our team, our junior counsel Adv. Anusha Nadasen, and our attorneys Michael Herbst and Michelle Clarke.
“To fix South Africa, we need to ensure that every South African has the opportunity to pursue their dreams and make them a reality. But as long as our country is held captive by a government that does not value true freedom, this will not change.”
– Herman Mashaba
President Herman Mashaba led our Freedom Day Commemoration on the fields of Giant Stadium in Soshanguve, Tshwane, where hundreds of activists joined.
Twenty-nine years after South Africa’s first democratic election, the country does not represent the hopes and aspirations of those who first voted as they have been let down by the ANC’s kleptomania.
Mashaba was joined by National Spokesperson, Lerato Ngobeni; Gauteng Provincial Chairperson, Funzi Ngobeni; KZN and Limpopo Provincial Chairpersons Zwakele Ngqondo-Ngqondo Mncwango and Sello Lediga, as well as other national and provincial leaders.
President Mashaba adressed the massive crowd at Giant Stadium and then began marching to Soshanguve police station to demand improved policing.
The only way the ANC can be removed from national and provincial governments next year is by political parties that can win votes away from the ANC and its partners. ActionSA continues to demonstration that we have the ability to win significant support away from the ANC and EFF in rural communities across South Africa.
The by-election reaffirms that ActionSA continues on its growth trajectory, and is the only political party in South Africa which successfully manages to win support away from the ANC. This will be crucial as we enter the important 2024 national elections. In every single black voting district where the ANC previously dominated, ActionSA achieved double-digit growth at the expense of the ANC:
Our support at the Al Furqaan Islamic Centre has meant that ActionSA won this voting district from the ANC for the very first time – once again proving our ability to unseat the ANC in the heart of its previous strongholds.
This by-election was the first for ActionSA in KwaZulu-Natal and a continued demonstration that ActionSA has the ability to win significant support away from the ANC and EFF in rural communities across South Africa.
ActionSA has undergone a rapid expansion throughout KwaZulu-Natal over the past few months. Campaigns have driven ActionSA’s recognition across the province and have worked to spread the message of ActionSA as a viable alternative.
This result demonstrates how, working together, the IFP and ActionSA can make significant strides in KwaZulu-Natal to win across ANC support ahead of the 2024 national and provincial elections where the ANC can be removed nationally and in KwaZulu-Natal. This result is a victory to all South Africans who seek change in next year’s election.
Limpopo’s political new kid on the block, ActionSA, emerged as the biggest winner in the three-horse highly contested Ward 10 by-election in Moletjie, Limpopo Province. Without a branch in Ward 10, ActionSA persuaded John Hlongwane to take membership of the party and stand as a candidate in the 25 January 2023 by-election.
Campaigning in an environment where three months prior the residents had not even heard of the name ActionSA, the new but definitely not small party has virtually emerged as the third biggest party in Limpopo.
Having achieved 8% and becoming the third largest party in this ward in just seven weeks, it is clear that ActionSA continues to grow and that our offer is resonating with the people of NMB.
While it is our intention to win every election we contest, we are encouraged by this significant result in the Eastern Cape.
This by-election was like no other because it was not just about the ward in which it took place, but is about the future of NMB as the leadership hangs in the balance between the ANC or themulti-party coalition.
As the City approaches 30 days water supply remaining, in the absence of any plan, the control of the City is all important to all of its residents who continue to lose faith in the ANC as evidenced by its double-digit decline in this ward.
ActionSA emerged from the by-election as the party registering the greatest growth result, with the exception of an independent candidate.
Increasing from 12.7% to 21.8% is a result that stakes ActionSA’s claim as the party that can challenge the ANC by winning across their support in sufficient numbers to challenge their political monopoly. This is a vital achievement in the effort to provide South Africans with hope that the political establishment has not previously provided.
This result also demonstrates how the ANC is collapsing. The ANC’s support in Soweto has gone from 89%, at its high-water mark, not to 31% in yesterday’s by-election. While ActionSA does not stand alone in driving this collapse, the truth is that places like Soweto no longer offer the ANC the protection of guaranteed support and will begin to drive their removal from power in 2024.
ActionSA celebrated phenomenal growth in the party’s first-ever by-election – contesting ward 96 in Tshwane.
The results in a hotly contested ward showed that ActionSA was the only party that registered growth, going from the 6.6% achieved in November 2021 to 22.3% the 5th largest party in the ward in 2021 to the 2nd largest now. The DA, VF Plus, EFF and ANC all recorded.
Of particular importance to ActionSA, was the achievement of support across all residents of the ward; a feature of our party that we celebrate, and which continues to set us apart from all other political parties. In this regard ActionSA registered 29% in the suburban areas of Doornpoort, we similarly won the Rooiwal Voting District in a predominantly black community.
ActionSA’s Senate has resolved that its first policy conference will be held from 12 – 14 September 2023.
This is a big moment for ActionSA as part of our general maturation and democratisation of internal decision-making but also because our offer to South Africans next year must arise from a comprehensive policy suite.
The plans adopted by our Senate achieve a process that is both grass-root in its approach to internal participation but also expert-led in terms of our plans to publicly convene panels of South Africans with expertise and experience in tackling our failed public service in South Africa.
This process will see teachers, principals, school inspectors, early childhood development experts and school governing body members coming together to talk about fixing our education system. It will see policemen and women, prosecutors, retired judges and private security specialists workshopping plans to tackle crime in our country. This will happen publicly in live broadcasts to all South Africans and it will differentiate from the political establishment which typically replies on politicians to write policies about challenges in areas of our society in which they have no real experience.
Arising from this extensive plan will be a policy platform that will make ActionSA distinct from all other parties and that will present a rational and detailed plan to Fix South Africa.
We stand before those who have supported us and say that 2022 was a successful year by any measurement.
However, we do not have the luxury of dwelling upon our successes. We have a proverbial mountain to climb in 2023 and our focus lies on this important work.
2023 must be the year in which ActionSA’s lay’s its foundation for the 2024 national and provincial elections. This foundation must be built on a wall-to-wall branch network across the 4468 wards, 278 municipalities and 9 provinces. These branches must become our delivery mechanism for trained volunteers to deliver our message of an alternative to the doorsteps of all South Africans. This message must arise from our other major focus in 2023 – a set of practical policy solutions to the pressing challenges facing South Africans.
We will deliver on these priorities for ActionSA but we will need your support to achieve this. With your support, ActionSA will reach more communities, streets and houses so that more South Africans will have a real political alternative to the ANC.
Bank: Nedbank
Branch: 198765
Account: 1211229459
SWIFT: NEDSZAJJ
Thank you,
Herman Mashaba
President, ActionSA
