THE CASE FOR
THE 2024 NATIONAL & PROVINCIAL ELECTION CONTEXT
A consensus exists that the ANC will fall below 50% nationally and in at least 4 provinces in this years general elections. The only debate is how far under 50% the ANC will fall between now and a likely election in August 2024.
85% of the South African population believes that the country is moving in the wrong direction and even 65% of ANC supporters believe this to be true. 2024 will effectively become a referendum on change. Those parties that align around change will prosper and those that align around the ANC’s status quo will decline.
The only real question is whether those who align around change can achieve a majority nationally this year.
THE ALIGNMENT OF ACTIONSA
ActionSA forms part of a nucleus of parties that founded the Multi-Party Charter For South Africa – a historic pre-election agreement concluded between 11 opposition political parties in South Africa to provide an electoral alternative to the governing ANC. Amongst this growing list of parties is ActionSA, DA, IFP, FF Plus, ACDP, ISANCO and the UIM and the Charter now represents the biggest voting bloc outside of the ANC in democratic South Africa.
These parties come together, despite their differences, because the crisis our country faces with unemployment, slow economic growth, load shedding, crime, corruption and poor service delivery, cannot begin to be solved as long as the ANC remains in control of national government.
This group of parties has begun to develop plans for a new governing national multi-party coalition, as well as in various provinces, which are likely to arise from these 2024 national and provincial elections. During the election campaign these parties will jointly present collective plans to address the greatest challenges facing South Africans and seek to inspire over 25 million people who have given up on the political process.
ActionSA is the fastest growing, most diverse party in the Multi-Party Charter and is the only party that can win support from the ANC in all nine provinces. As such our role and success is vital to the broader project to Fix South Africa.
The Case for ActionSA
ActionSA’s performance in the 2021 local government elections ensured that it emerged as one of the serious contenders for the 2024 elections, emerging 6th nationally despite only contesting 6 out of 278 municipalities. Since these local government elections, ActionSA has become established in all 9 provinces with a diverse leadership team that is making significant ground across the country. ActionSA will achieve between 10.7% nationally in this year’s election, with 1.58 million votes and will emerge as the largest party of a coalition in Gauteng at 20% of the vote. These contributions and the extent to which this growth takes place at the expense of the ANC and EFF, will be a major driving factor behind the change agenda in 2024.
Branches
ActionSA has placed a focus on the establishment of branches across the 4468 wards in South Africa because organized branches of volunteers remain the primary method of distributing an offer to the majority of South Africans.
ActionSA has established branches in 42% of the wards nationally, with many more branches growing rapidly towards reaching the threshold of 50 members required to launch a branch. With 270 000 members, ActionSA has established regional structures in all 52 districts and 8 metros.
A political academy has been designed and is starting to rollout to acclimate our over 240 000 members into a distinct ActionSA identity and culture that leaves behind the baggage of other political parties from whence members came.
A Dynamic and Diverse Leadership Team
Zwakele Mncwango
Thoko Mashiane
Patricia Kopane
Funzi Ngobeni
Athol Trollip
Victor Mothemela
Herman Mashaba
Michael Beaumont
Growth in By-Elections Across SA
ActionSA has contested by-elections various provinces over the past 12 months which has demonstrated its growth potential in a way that polls cannot capture.
Ward 11, KwaNongoma (Rural KZN)
Ward 43, Nelson Mandela Bay
(Eastern Cape)
Ward 10, Polokwane
(Rural Limpopo)
Ward 53, JHB (Soweto)
Ward 96, Tshwane (Gauteng)
Ward 7, JHB (Ennerdale & Finetown)
Policy Conference
On 12 – 14 September 2023 ActionSA held its inaugural policy conference with over 600 delegates from around the country.
ActionSA emerged from this policy conference as the rational political centre in South Africa while offering strong solutions on issues that are a source of anger for South Africans from all communities.
Of particular note is ActionSA tabling the only policy alternative in South Africa to the failed ANC policy of BBBEE, in the form of Inclusive Economic Empowerment.
Our Campaign Offer By Air
Samkelo Mgobozi
National Communications Director
ActionSA has developed a communications framework that ensures that identified leaders act as spokespersons 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 an array of communication platforms. All communications is underpinned by the vision articulated in The South African Dream and through the policy solutions that emanated out of the policy conference last year.
Despite not being a party in Parliament, ActionSA continues to receive national news coverage to rival some of South Africa’s largest political parties. Over the course of 2023, ActionSA received 1,074,217,835 mentions in the media overall. This is the equivalent advertising value of more than R 476 million in broadcast, and over R268 million in online media coverage.
In online media, ActionSA increased in 2023 compared to 2022 by 2485 mentions or as a difference of 34%.
For broadcast, ActionSA increased by 52% in 2023 with 3110 mentions more than 2022.
And the overall clip count for ActionSA in Print media increased by 754 mentions in 2023.
This is a testament to the fact that ActionSA’s message of hope and change is resonating, not only with the people of South Africa, but importantly, newsmakers across the length and breadth of the country who desperate to see a prosperous South Africa.
Our Campaign Offer by Land
ActionSA’s focus lies in the building of structures that are capacitated to deliver our message throughout the 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 is driving the 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.
John Moodey
Director of Operations
The South African Dream campaign will convert our 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 September 2023, a series of burst campaigns are being delivered along the lines of the policy buckets (burst campaign referring to a short, high-intensity campaign). Each burst campaign focuses 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.
Canvassing & Turnout
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.
Strategic Litigation
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:
Litigation against Eskom, the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, and the Department of Public Enterprises to compel the publication of the government’s plans to end loadshedding and to interdict Eskom from loadshedding critical industries.
Litigation against eThekwini (Durban) Municipality over the ongoing sewage crisis arising from infrastructure neglect and failure, which has collapsed the local tourism industry. Our court case is prepared to ask the Durban High Court to find against the eThekwini Municipality’s contraventions of the Constitution and National Environmental Management Act and to compel the municipality to resolve the problem.
Litigation against the Department of Water and Sanitation for the decade long delay in the finalisation of the multi-billion-rand Giyani Water Project. The project has been collapsed due to corruption that is currently under investigation, and ActionSA seeks High Court intervention to compel the national government to finalise this project. ActionSA has also announced an intervention worth over R2 million, to provide bore holes in the area to assist communities.
Litigation against the Department of Energy and Mineral Resources over their refusal and failure to retrieve a container with the remains of three miners who were buried 70m underground when Lily Mine (near Barberton, Mpumalanga) collapsed from what has been found to be criminal negligence on the part of mine management.
High-Profile South Africans are Joining ActionSA
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.
Registration & Voter Turnout Campaign
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.
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:
- – The creation of an online platform using both the voters roll and the Home Affairs population roll, against which ActionSA will canvass and populate contact information and political affiliation of supporters. This platform will be used to identify all South Africans who are both inclined towards ActionSA as well as needing to register to vote and ensure that ActionSA representatives conclude those registrations.
- – A marketing campaign combining both outdoor advertising and digital marketing aimed to driving a conversation in South Africa about voter registration, the problems people endure in our country and how we cannot complain about a government if we are not willing to register and vote.
- – Most importantly, and likely to arise from any market research, is the view voter turnout is a product of people’s belief in the agency of their vote. If South Africans feel that the 2024 election is ‘the change election’, there is a clear pattern of record non-ANC turnout at voting stations in Cape Town in 2006 and the Western Cape in 2009. This belief needs to be galvanised through multi-party platforms that generate confidence in a non-ANC alternative.
ActionSA attracts many first-time voters with an astonishing 25% of our membership being first time prospective voters. This makes voter registration important. ActionSA has succeeded to turnout nearly 100 000 unregistered, and mostly young, first time voters who will be voting for change that fixes South Africa in 2024. This was accomplished through thousands of volunteers working telephones and fetching people from their homes to register to vote while others manned tables at the over 24 000 voting stations across the country.
Fundraising
ActionSA’s growth and performance has, undoubtedly, produced an environment in which more and more South Africans are coming forward to fund ActionSA. Unlike political parties who are represented in Parliament, ActionSA does not receive state funding yet and has to compete with established parties who receive their share of R1.3 billion each year.
Despite this relative disadvantage ActionSA competes with the established parties in every way, exceeding them in certain areas. This is because we have built an efficient and front-facing organisation that is geared to get our message to the street corners and door steps of South Africans.
The reality is that ActionSA converts a high percentage of people that receive our message of a viable political alternative. The only question is how many people, households and communities we can get to and this is a function of how well-resourced ActionSA is.
A Final Word
ActionSA has a proven ability to grow our support at the expense of both the ANC and the EFF. In a scenario where like-minded parties are working together to form a united opposition to an ANC/EFF government in 2024 this is crucial to the success of these efforts.
However, our ability to win support is directly proportional to our ability to directly engage voters and share our offering with them. This is a function of available funding. With your support we believe we have a realistic opportunity to bring positive change in South Africa next year.
Michael Beaumont
ActionSA National Chairperson
MAKING WAVES
Presenting ActionSA’s Team Fix South Africa:
a credible alternative to the failed political establishment
On Monday 11 March, President Herman Mashaba announced ‘Team Fix South Africa,’ a team of candidates that we have assembled as part of our Parliamentary list that stand ready to address the greatest challenges facing our nation.
These candidates will form part of a caucus that hails from diverse backgrounds, coming from both urban and rural communities, the public and private sector, and academic and civil society. They represent the best of the South African people.
Our candidates were selected following a gruelling selection process that saw people from outside of politics putting up their hands to take action to build a better country for our people.
They bring with them the level of skill and expertise needed for ActionSA to turn around the decay which took place under the ruling party and restore South Africa to a path of prosperity.
With their announcement, we want to demonstrate to the South African people that we are not a party hallmarked by career politicians with no real-world experience in the portfolios they are meant to lead.
No. ActionSA’s depth of leadership reflects a parliamentary caucus with the skills necessary to enter government and fix South Africa. We are a party that is ready to take action, because only action will fix South Africa.
“We will not engage in the practice of cadre deployment, nepotism and cronyism. We will only appoint people on merit and with impeccable track records with a commitment to clean governance and service delivery.”
Welcoming the Election Date - We are ready to fix south africa
ActionSA notes the announcement by President Ramaphosa of 29 May 2024 as the election date and invites him and the Premiers to begin packing their offices and updating their CVs.
Over the past 2 years ActionSA has built structures across all nine provinces of our country with branches now in over 45% of the wards of the country, under the leadership of credible provincial leadership.
By-elections have been contested in various provinces which have revealed ActionSA’s continued growth in Gauteng, our vote winning potential into double digits in provinces outside of urban centres and the fact that ActionSA is uniting South Africans from all communities and backgrounds.
ActionSA held an inaugural policy conference which saw delegates from around the country debate and approve policies which present the most practical solutions to the pressing challenges facing South Africans.
ActionSA has resolved to run a positive campaign which will be a departure from a political establishment that has failed South Africans by focussing on one another more than the crisis that has developed under their time in Parliament.
ActionSA’s campaign will strive to show all South Africans that We Can Fix South Africa but that this work can only begin once the ANC is removed from office. ActionSA is the party that will achieve this.
The Multi-Party Charter
The Multi-Party Charter has unveiled its first policy position since it was formed and we believe that our plans will lead to a new economic direction for the country.
As ActionSA, we are committed to ensuring that government spending on economic infrastructure delivers real value for money. We understand the importance of efficient and transparent fiscal management.
A major initiative we intend to implement is the establishment of fiscal discipline in government borrowing. This will be achieved by annually capping the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio, through the introduction of a “fiscal rule.” This move is crucial for maintaining the independence of the South African Reserve Bank.
Driven by the necessity to position South Africa as a competitive market for innovation and investment, we will unlock the full potential of investment by removing barriers and eliminating overly prohibitive limitations.
These initiatives, as outlined in the Multi-Party Charter of South Africa, represent our vision for a thriving, efficient, and equitable South Africa.
INTRODUCING OUR PREMIER CANDIDATES
Our 2024 Election Campaign Launch
On Saturday, 2 December 2023, we officially launched our 2024 election campaign in Ga-Ramotse, Hammanskraal. ActionSA leaders, members and activists from across the country gathered as President Herman Mashaba outlined our vision and plans for a prosperous future for all South Africans. We are extremely proud of how far we have come in just a few short years, since we launched to a virtual audience as we faced a global lockdown.
If there is one thing I know about my fellow South Africans, it is that we are NOT an unpatriotic nation. Unpatriotic South Africans are the minority. They are the FEW. But we, we are the MANY.
WE CAN FIX
SOUTH AFRICA
When I made the decision to leave the relative comfort of business and enter active politics, I did so because I could not talk about the change South Africa needs any longer – I needed to do something.
This is the essence of ActionSA, a party which has united South Africans behind the need for action that can Fix South Africa.
ActionSA has delivered beyond the expectations of commentators and analysts because South Africans are finding in it a viable political alternative that has been missing.
Our success depends on prominent South Africans investing in the political future of South Africa by investing in ActionSA. Will you join me?
Bank: Nedbank 198765
Branch: Acc Name: ActionSA
Acc #: 1211229459
SWIFT: NEDSZAJJ
Kgosi Kwena Mangope