Small Business Could Shape Next Week’s Election. No Party Is Talking About It.
What Are No Political Parties in South Africa Giving Small Business their Support?
The SME Vote Neglected
South Africa’s voters will elect new municipal councillors on 4 November 2026. These votes will decide who controls the cities and towns that collect rates, issue trading permits, maintain roads and decide how public money is spent. Yet almost none of the major parties have told voters what they will do to help small businesses start, survive and grow in those same places.
Small firms create the jobs and the revenue municipalities need
Small businesses and informal traders create the majority of new jobs in South Africa. They also generate the local activity that keeps money circulating in a town or suburb. When a small firm employs one more person, that person can buy groceries, pay rent and, eventually, pay municipal accounts. When many small firms do the same, the municipality collects more rates and service charges and the local economy becomes more resilient.
The public record shows that the political parties contesting next week’s municipal elections in South Africa, have not treated the growth of local small businesses, and the jobs and revenue that follow, as a central municipal priority.
Despite this, party campaigns in the weeks leading up to the election have concentrated on water, electricity, potholes and waste collection. Those services matter. They are not, however, a substitute for income.
Statistics South Africa reported that the official unemployment rate stood at 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026. Among people aged 15 to 34 the rate was 47.4%. Roughly five million young people who want work cannot find it. In many households the only income is a social grant. A municipality can deliver clean water and collect refuse, but a household with no wage or business income still struggles to pay the bill. The gap between service delivery promises and the absence of local job creation has received little attention on the campaign trail.
Parties were asked three simple questions. None replied
Business Tech Africa contacted the media offices of the African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, Economic Freedom Fighters, uMkhonto weSizwe Party, ActionSA, and the Freedom Front Plus, being those with the widest support base. The email, sent on the morning of 27 October 2026, asked three straightforward questions and requested a reply by 16:30 the same day:
- Does the party have a specific policy or set of proposals for supporting small business development at municipal level?
- If yes, what practical steps would a municipality controlled by the party take to reduce red tape, improve access to trading spaces, support township and informal businesses, or make it easier for small firms to do business with the municipality?
- How does the party intend to measure whether these measures are actually creating jobs and growing local businesses?
So far none of the parties have bothered to respond. The silence once again highlights their lack of concern for the small business sector. Parties that regularly publish detailed plans on water, electricity and roads have not placed an equally clear set of municipal-level measures for small businesses in front of voters, and have shown no urgency in answering basic questions about the issue.
What the parties’ manifesto documents actually say
Public documents that do exist show the same pattern. The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) 2026 local government manifesto contains the most specific language. It commits DA-led municipalities to a review of red tape, a “silence-is-consent” rule for certain permits, expanded one-stop shops with business starter toolkits, and simpler online registration for informal traders.
The DA's 2021 manifesto already spoke of better-located trading spaces and lower costs for construction and electricity connections. These statements go further than most other parties. They remain, however, high-level commitments rather than costed programmes with published targets for the number of businesses assisted or jobs created in the last ten years.
The African National Congress refers to support for small businesses and cooperatives inside its local economic development strategies and Integrated Development Plans. Most of the concrete activity that reaches township and rural firms comes through national programmes run by the Department of Small Business Development rather than through municipal budgets or by-laws under ANC control.
The Economic Freedom Fighters’ 2026 manifesto promises municipal support centres, more trading spaces and preferential local procurement for small firms and cooperatives. ActionSA and the Freedom Front Plus speak of reducing red tape and creating a more business-friendly environment, but neither has published detailed municipal implementation plans with measurable outcomes.
Little evidence of results on the ground
Across all parties, independent evaluations that show a clear link between a municipal programme and sustained increases in local employment or municipal revenue are scarce. Local economic development units exist in most municipalities, yet their reports rarely quantify how many new or surviving small businesses resulted from the work, or how many additional jobs were created as a direct result.
The pattern is consistent with how parties raise money. Large companies and business associations are regular donors and sponsors of events. Small businesses and informal traders, by contrast, rarely appear on donor lists. The result is a political conversation that treats small firms as a residual category rather than the main engine of local employment and revenue.
A municipality can fix a water pipe or reseal a road, yet if the people who live along that road have no income, the service remains under-funded and the local economy stays weak.
Voters are left without a clear choice
Voters will decide on 4 November which parties control the institutions that issue trading permits, set building rules, procure goods and services, and decide how much land and infrastructure is made available for local enterprises. Those decisions affect whether a young person in a township can open a small shop without months of delays, whether a contractor can bid for municipal work without prohibitive paperwork, and whether a town’s rates base grows because more businesses are operating.
The absence of clear, measurable municipal small-business plans from every major party, and their failure even to reply to a direct enquiry on the subject, leaves that choice poorly informed.
The three questions sent on 27 October remain unanswered. Any replies that arrive after publication will be added to the record. Until then, the public record shows that the political parties contesting next week’s municipal elections in South Africa, have not treated the growth of local small businesses, and the jobs and revenue that follow, as a central municipal priority.
