South Africa has a formally federal Constitution and an increasingly robust and thriving community federalist scene at grassroots level. With the local government elections taking place next week on 4 November, it might be useful to survey some of the participating parties on how they approach the question of political decentralisation.
My colleague, Nicholas Woode-Smith, undertook a similar exercise before the 2024 general election.
Local Government White Paper
The golden thread of inquiry here is the Revised White Paper on Local Government that Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled earlier in October.
This policy was adopted by the Cabinet, meaning it required and satisfied the sufficient consensus threshold that has governed coalition policymaking in the central government since May 2024. In other words, at least both the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) approved it.
In brief, the new policy creates a centrally steered, capacity-linked reallocation of municipal powers and functions. Larger or better-performing municipalities may retain or receive expanded responsibilities, while functions in under-resourced or underperforming municipalities are to be reassigned to district or regional structures.
The document sketches a longer-term trajectory toward a single-tier local government system outside the metros, supported by central coordination, stronger intervention mechanisms, supposed professionalisation rules that increase central and provincial leverage over senior appointments and budgets, and closer alignment with the centralist District Development Model.
The implications are clear and largely adverse to formal federalism.
The Constitution confers original governing authority on municipalities, including a general competence under section 156(5) to do whatever is necessary for the effective performance of their functions. The White Paper does not expand or secure that residual local authority and instead institutionalises a system in which the centre determines, through policy and eventually legislation, which municipalities may exercise which functions and which must surrender them.
Differentiation on the basis of demonstrated capacity might appear pragmatic, but it inverts the Constitution’s federal logic: rather than protecting original local powers and allowing communities to bear the consequences of their choices, it treats local failure as a trigger for upwards reassignment under central supervision. The contemplated single-tier model and the central coordinative function concentrates the authority to redraw the division of powers at the centre.
This is devolution of a distinctly centralist kind – conditional, reversible, and administered from above – rather than the realisation of the latent federalist substance of the Constitution. It leaves intact, and in some respects strengthens, the practice of treating local government as a mere delivery arm whose effective powers depend on central assessment and permission.
True federalism would require the opposite: a strong presumption in favour of local residual authority, mechanisms that make failure politically and fiscally costly to local office-bearers and their voters, and a far narrower, more tightly constrained role for central or provincial intervention.
The White Paper may improve short-term system coordination and protect services in collapsing municipalities while the Government of National Unity (GNU) is around, but it ultimately sets South Africa up for disappointment when a central government comprising the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) begins dictating to DA or Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) municipalities in 2034.
Now, where do South Africa’s parties stand on decentralisation and the newly mooted policy dispensation? Let us consider the eight parties that received over 100,000 votes in 2024 in alphabetical order.
ActionSA
This party (rhetorically) emphasises professional municipal administrations, merit-based appointments, financial discipline, and reliable basic services. It has spoken in favour of greater local capacity where municipalities demonstrate it, but it has not articulated a robust federalist or localist case for municipal autonomy as a matter of principle.
In practice, where ActionSA has held local power or influence, its focus has been managerial reform within the existing framework rather than testing or expanding the boundaries of original municipal authority. It has not taken a position on the White Paper and would likely support it given the supposed focus on professionalisation, and the high degree of practical trust ActionSA has vested in ANC-led initiatives in general.
African National Congress
The ANC remains the party of constitutional centralism in practice.
It has long treated local government primarily as a developmental delivery arm of central government policy rather than a sphere with protected residual authority. The White Paper is the logical culmination of this approach: capacity assessment, upwards reassignment, stronger intervention powers, and central coordination of the powers and functions of localities.
Nothing in the document or the ANC’s public defence of it suggests any intention to treat municipal failure as a local political problem for local voters to resolve. The ANC’s councillors and structures continue to operate on the assumption that central policy and intervention remain the primary correctives.
On this question the ANC and the IFP have, in substance, aligned.
Democratic Alliance
The DA, at one time known as the Progressive Federal Party, is the party that most consistently invokes federalism and “devolution” (which it, sneakily, treats as a synonym for federalism) in its policy documentation.
It has long advocated for the devolution of functions such as policing and energy to “competent” municipalities, and it frames local competence as the path to better government.
The White Paper nonetheless passed Cabinet under the GNU’s sufficient consensus rule, necessitating DA buy-in. This is the clearest recent illustration of the gap between the DA’s federalist rhetoric and its willingness to accept a centrally steered, conditional reallocation of municipal powers.
Where the DA governs, it has generally sought greater local operational freedom within existing frameworks and has resisted certain central interventions, but it has not treated the White Paper’s logic as a fundamental threat to the ideal of federalism – as it should be doing. The party continues to prefer negotiated devolution over the harder federalist insistence that original local powers should be presumed and protected regardless of the preferences of the centre.
Economic Freedom Fighters
The Marxist-Leninist EFF is an unapologetic centralist.
Its programme subordinates local government to central “transformative” objectives, with little room for residual municipal authority or community-level accountability for failure. The party’s local structures, where they have governed or held influence, have not distinguished themselves by defending local autonomy against other spheres.
The White Paper’s capacity-linked reassignment and stronger central oversight complement the EFF’s view of local government as an instrument of central policy rather than a constitutionally protected sphere.
Freedom Front Plus (FF+)
The FF+ is the party that most consistently treats self-determination as a constitutional and practical necessity.
It has long argued for greater provincial and municipal autonomy, residual powers, and the practical application of subsidiarity. Its opposition to centralising measures is usually explicit, and its local representatives have generally aligned with that stance. The White Paper’s model of centrally determined differentiation and upwards reassignment runs against the FF+’s stated position.
In its comments during the policy’s adoption, for instance, the FF+ proposed ward-based budgets, mandatory infrastructure maintenance allocations, and the establishment of sub-councils in metros to bring decision-making closer to communities.
Unlike parties that treat federalism primarily as a campaign theme, the FF+ has tended to measure policy against the question of whether it protects or erodes more local self-determination.
Nonetheless, one does not necessarily find in practice that FF+ councillors are championing the kinds of unilateralist initiatives that communities should undertake to rescue themselves from state failure or hostility. Like the DA, the FF+ relies heavily on its merely stated policy preferences rather than federalism-in-action.
Inkatha Freedom Party
Having the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs portfolio is the federalist’s wet dream – it is the responsible department.
But despite the supposedly federalist IFP controlling it, little federalist activity has taken place.
Under Velenkosini Hlabisa’s ministry, the department has driven the White Paper that institutionalises central assessment and reassignment of municipal functions, and it has issued standardised bylaws that pull township economy regulation upwards rather than leaving it to local authority where it constitutionally belongs. The party’s historical federalism has not translated into a defence of original municipal competence or a narrower interpretation of central intervention powers.
The IFP has not risen to the occasion. It used to openly champion federalism in its policy documentation, but if you browse the party’s website today you will find little, if anything at all.
On the White Paper, the IFP and ANC are substantially aligned: local failure is treated as a problem to be managed by higher spheres rather than a signal that local political accountability should be allowed to take its course.
uMkhonto weSizwe
The MK’s constitutional proposals for South Africa centre on parliamentary supremacy, the reduction or abolition of constraints on majoritarian power, a stronger role for traditional ethnic authority at the centre, and the explicit rejection of mechanisms (such as section 235 of the Constitution) that could ground subcentral self-determination.
It has sought the repeal of section 235 precisely because the party sees any residual community or territorial autonomy as a threat to central control.
While the MK has occasionally objected to particular proposals from the centre, its overall programme is one of a strong ethnically-based South African government exercising unmediated power. Local government is not a sphere of original residual authority but an administrative extension of central and tribal power.
If the ghost of the National Party was participating in the 2026 local government elections, it would be working through the MK.
Patriotic Alliance (PA)
The PA’s approach is largely transactional.
It has prioritised local service delivery and constituency interests where it holds power, but it has not developed a coherent constitutional position on residual municipal authority or subsidiarity. Its public statements and coalition behaviour have not been characterised by resistance to centralising frameworks when those frameworks serve short-term local or electoral interests. The White Paper’s differentiated model is not something the party has treated as a matter of principle.
I cannot tell you who to vote for, because even the clearly pro-federalism parties to some degree only champion federalism in rhetoric or documentation, but resist following through in practice.
Having this information, however, hopefully helps you make a more informed decision on 4 November.
Above all, remember, you can vote wrong.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/governmentza/28473939980/in/photostream/]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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