Post-senate briefing and the way forward for ActionSA
6 June 2024
Following an election which saw ActionSA amass over 630 000 votes and emerge as the largest new party outside of MK in this election, ActionSA's Senate has met and begun the process of deliberating on the way forward.
The Party has initiated a review of its election campaign aimed at including the voices of South Africans. This process will be initiated immediately forthwith to ensure that future campaigns are guided by those who seek change in our country.
This review process will include a roadshow of structures around the country with the express purpose of engaging ActionSA members and volunteers to gain their valued perspectives as the people responsible for our growth.
ActionSA’s Senate has deliberated on our relationship with other political parties going forward. This process has resolved that ActionSA will leave the Multi-Party Charter because of the serious breach by those parties who publicly signed and campaigned under an agreement which expressly ruled out working relationships with the ANC.
ActionSA has assessed a potential Parliament in which the opposition forms a coalition with the ANC and determined that ActionSA is going to have to be the unofficial opposition in Parliament. This is why ActionSA has announced that its President and National Chairperson step back to allow for a team that will punch above its weight and serve South Africans like a much larger team.
It was similarly resolved that ActionSA will continue to honour its commitment to be an alternative from the ANC. As such, ActionSA will not entertain any working relationship with the ANC at any level of government. This is after ActionSA, early last year, conducted an online public participation process with our members, structures and ordinary South Africans that urged us to participate in the MPC and emphatically resolved that we reaffirm our commitment to being an alternative to the ANC. As such we will remain in the City of Tshwane government in its current configuration but are prepared to vacate that government and be a constructive opposition should the politics of the day return the ANC to the Capital.
ActionSA, going forward, will operate as a constructive opposition in the National Assembly and the three legislatures where we are represented by. If sound and ethical proposals are placed before our representatives that serve the South African people, we will support those proposals unreservedly. Similarly, when accountability is required, ActionSA will be the hardest when it comes to holding a government to account when the opposition is conflicted.
The essence of these positions adopted is that ActionSA will enter an era where it will stand alone, unencumbered by political relationships, and will focus on taking the most credible alternative to the South African people.
It is important to stress that ActionSA has only begun its process of positioning itself ahead of the local government election in 2026. Notwithstanding the current focus on national and provincial politics, the ActionSA Senate has orientated itself around the fact that most South Africans suffer most greatly because of municipal failures that leave them without water, unreliable electricity and submerged in sewage.
ActionSA and its leaders are more committed than ever before to building a political alternative to the party that has created the crisis under which South Africans suffer – even more so when we may stand alone in doing so.
Issued by Michael Beaumont, ActionSA National Chairperson, 6 June 2024
