Victory or Death – The EFF’s revolutionary programme to rescue local government
By Sam Matiase and Carl Niehaus
South Africa’s municipalities are collapsing. Water does not flow. Sewage runs in the streets. Roads are impassable. Electricity is unreliable. Refuse piles up. Corruption has become routine. Unemployment and despair deepen every year.
This is not an abstract crisis. It is the lived reality of millions of ordinary people who have waited more than three decades for the promise of democracy to reach their homes, their clinics, their streets and their dignity.
The 2026 local government elections are therefore not ordinary elections. They are a decisive moment. The Economic Freedom Fighters have named this moment with uncompromising clarity: Victory or Death.
There is no middle ground left. Either communities reclaim their municipalities and rebuild them as instruments of development and dignity, or the decay will continue until local government becomes a permanent site of abandonment and extraction.In this moment only one political force offers a coherent, tested and revolutionary alternative.
That force is the Economic Freedom Fighters. The EFF is the only progressive, revolutionary party with both the political will and the practical experience to lift local government out of its terrible decline and quagmire. This is not rhetoric.
It is the substance of the 2026 Local Government Elections Manifesto.The Record That Cannot Be Denied The EFF did not arrive at these elections empty-handed.
For ten years EFF councillors have operated inside the system they seek to transform. They have exposed corruption, removed mayors, forced permanent employment, expanded free basic services, written off debt for the poor, built clinics and reservoirs, stopped illegal demolitions, and defended communities against political neglect.
In Ekurhuleni, Tshwane, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City and dozens of smaller municipalities, the EFF has demonstrated that another way of governing is possible even when it does not hold an outright majority.These are not isolated incidents. They are proof of concept. A party that has already used its limited power to deliver water, electricity, jobs and accountability is the only party that can be trusted with greater power.
The ANC, DA and IFP have controlled the majority of municipalities for years. Their record is one of waste, debt, consultant enrichment and service failure. The Auditor-General’s findings of billions wasted, unpaid creditors and collapsing infrastructure are not accidental.
They are the logical outcome of a politics that treats municipalities as sites of patronage rather than centres of development.The Heart of the Manifesto: The EFF CommitmentsThe 2026 Manifesto is organised around a clear set of commitments that address every major failure of local government.
These commitments are practical, measurable and rooted in the daily needs of the people.Land and the agrarian economy stand at the centre of the revolutionary programme. EFF municipalities will stop the sale of municipal land and instead use expropriation powers to make abandoned land and buildings available for young people, agriculture and community use.
They will develop localised land reform plans, enter into agreements with traditional leaders, establish municipal market clearing houses and abattoirs for emerging farmers, subdivide land for intensive small-scale farming, and aim to create at least 500 youth jobs per municipality through micro-irrigation projects. Land is not a side issue. It is the foundation of economic freedom at the local level.Free basic services and the protection of the poor form the non-negotiable core of the EFF’s approach to dignity.
Qualifying households will be automatically registered for free basic water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal within 90 days of an EFF administration taking office. Historical debt of indigent households will be written off. Progressive tariff structures will protect the poor while ensuring municipal sustainability. Ward-based People’s Budget Assemblies will give communities direct oversight of these services.
Working and middle-income households will also receive targeted relief through adjusted tariffs, payment arrangements and early intervention systems that prevent debt from becoming unmanageable.Insourcing and the rebuilding of internal capacity is the practical rejection of the tender and labour-broker model that has hollowed out municipalities. Within 24 months, EFF municipalities will begin employing workers directly for security, cleaning, waste collection, maintenance and other core functions.
Permanent artisan units, professionalised administrations, transparent procurement, and digital systems will replace the culture of consultants and middlemen. Procurement will be redirected so that at least 80 percent of municipal spending supports local SMMEs, cooperatives and township enterprises.Jobs and local economic development are treated as direct municipal responsibilities. Municipal artisan units, apprenticeship programmes, industrial hubs, formalised trading spaces, and support for waste pickers and informal traders will turn municipalities from centres of consumption into centres of production and employment.
Youth will receive preferential access to jobs, procurement and skills development. At least 40 percent of municipal employment opportunities and 50 percent of procurement opportunities will be directed toward young people.Health, gender equality and social development receive concrete commitments that go far beyond slogans. Clinics will be extended to 12-hour and 24-hour operations where demand exists. Mobile health units, community health workers absorbed as municipal employees, victim support centres for survivors of gender-based violence, free sanitary products, and gender-responsive budgeting will become standard.
A minimum 50 percent representation of women in municipal leadership, management and procurement will be enforced. Unisex and gender-neutral facilities will be introduced in municipal buildings. These are not peripheral social issues. They are central to building municipalities that serve the whole community with dignity.Energy, water, sanitation and waste are treated as public goods rather than profit centres. Extra charges on prepaid meters will end. Rapid-response technical teams will restore electricity within one hour of reported faults. Water leaks will be fixed within a day.
Bucket toilets and unsafe pit toilets will be eradicated. Illegal dumping will be tackled through the Andries Tatane Campaign and the incorporation of waste pickers into formal systems. Climate resilience, municipal nurseries and ecological infrastructure teams will protect the long-term sustainability of local environments.Human settlements, transport, infrastructure and public safety complete the developmental picture.
Housing backlogs will be addressed through time-bound plans, serviced sites, formalisation of informal settlements, and the conversion of hijacked and unused buildings. Roads, stormwater systems and public transport facilities will be maintained as a priority. Municipal law enforcement will be strengthened, municipal courts established, and modern technology deployed against crime and extortion.
Rural safety programmes will protect stock and infrastructure in vulnerable areas.Financing is addressed with equal seriousness. The EFF will continue the fight in Parliament to increase the local government share of nationally raised revenue from the current roughly 9 percent toward 15 percent. Infrastructure Grant Technical Oversight Units staffed by engineers, planners and financial analysts will ensure grant money is not stolen or wasted.
Debt owed by government departments and large businesses will be collected. Consultant spending will be replaced by permanent professional capacity. Free land for factories will be made available to drive industrialisation and expand the municipal rates base.Every one of these commitments is practical. Every one is measurable. Together they constitute a comprehensive programme to rebuild local government as a site of economic freedom rather than a site of extraction.Why Only the EFFOther parties have had decades to fix local government. They have failed.
The ANC has treated municipalities as employment agencies for the politically connected and cash machines for tenderpreneurs. The DA has demonstrated that managerial efficiency without a developmental and redistributive vision still leaves the poor behind. Smaller parties lack both the national footprint and the revolutionary clarity required for systemic change.The EFF is different. It is a revolutionary party that understands that local government is the primary site where the majority of South Africans experience the state.
It is a progressive party that refuses to accept that poverty, unemployment and service failure are permanent features of democracy. It is a party that has already shown, in the limited spaces it has controlled or influenced, that another model of governance is possible.This manifesto is therefore not a list of promises. It is a declaration of war against the status quo. It is a programme to restore the developmental character of local government, to place public resources in the service of the people, and to rebuild the capacity of the state from the ground up.A Clarion CallThe choice is clear.
Continue with the politics of decay, or choose the politics of reconstruction and economic freedom. The EFF offers the latter.Every South African who is tired of empty promises, tired of sewage in the streets, tired of darkness, tired of unemployment, and tired of watching public money disappear into private pockets, must now act. Vote for the Economic Freedom Fighters in the 2026 local government elections.And for those who have not yet registered: the Independent Electoral Commission has set aside the weekend of 1 and 2 August 2026 for voter registration. Use that weekend. Register.
Ensure that your name appears on the voters’ roll. Do not allow yourself to be excluded from the most important local government elections of our generation.Victory or Death is not a slogan for the faint-hearted. It is a recognition that the crisis is too deep for half-measures. The EFF has placed before the people a detailed, practical and revolutionary programme. It is now for the people to decide whether they will seize that programme and begin the work of rebuilding, or whether they will continue to endure the long decline.The municipalities belong to the people. It is time the people took them back.
Vote EFF. Register to vote for the EFF. Let the work of reconstruction begin, so that we can truly achieve economic freedom in our lifetime. Victory or Death!*
*Sam Matiase is a member of the EFF Central Command Team (CCT) and an EFF Member of Parliament, he is also the EFF’s Mayoral Candidate for Mangaung Metro.
*Carl Niehaus is an EFF Member of Parliament (MP).
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL
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