Ahead of its first policy conference, next week, ActionSA chairperson Michael Beaumont says that his party is not what it was when it launched three years ago, and he promises that upcoming policy discussions will centre around the needs of South Africans and not around other political parties.  

He was addressing the media on Thursday on the party’s readiness for the policy conference, where he said that ActionSA would be running a positive campaign in 2024. 

Beaumont shared that ActionSA was gaining momentum, now with about 225 000 members and growing branches across the country. 

The party will host its policy conference between September 12 and 14 when it will debate issues including energy security, corruption, economic prosperity and justice, law and order, education, and healthcare. 

Beaumont described the ActionSA policies up for discussion as “innovative”, “distinct” and “unique” and said his party has gone “out of its way” to obtain experts from various fields with the common interest of moving South Africa forward.

Some of the experts who have been instrumental in drafting the party’s policy document are Efficient Group’s Dawie Roodt, ActionSA Director of Governance Dr Nasiphi Moya, South African Cities Network's Liteboho Makhele, independent analyst Peter Fabricius, and the Institute for Global Dialogue’s Dr Philani Mthembu.

Some of the more notable proposals include discussions of a universal income grant that could create over a million jobs while growing the economy at a rate of 5%.

Beaumont said the party has discussed repealing the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) Act, which it proposes replacing with a new suite of social justice policies. 

ActionSA believes that the current Act is not living up to its promises and is creating more challenges. 

Moya said the Act had produced a few billionaires while the levels of inequalities, poverty and unemployment had increased. 

"The desired outcomes that the policy is talking about it is failing to achieve and coincidentally when people talk about the story of BBBEE, they talk of the first beneficiary who was close to the late former Statesman Nelson Mandela. From there, we know that the people who have benefitted from that Act are people who are connected to the elite. As Senate we could not ignore that while the intentions of the Act flow from the Constitution to say that it will redress the injustices of the past and all lives will be improved in South Africa, it is doing the opposite of that. It is leaving the majority of South Africans on the outside," she explained. 

She said the survival of the country depends on the Act. 

IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY

ActionSA says it is also unapologetic on enforcing immigration regulations, including the deportation of foreign nationals found guilty of a crime, and undocumented foreign nationals without a legitimate claim to residency or asylum in South Africa.

Beaumont said that Home Affairs was failing many migrants who did not have the correct paperwork to be in the country. 

"Nothing that we propose in terms of reforming illegal migration is in conflict with the Constitution because the very first principle of a nation starts with the border and with the idea that the country has not just the right but the obligation to determine the flow of people and goods across the border and under what conditions. We can never have a situation where immigrants are scapegoated," stressed Beaumont.  

On the issue of the Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi instituting a commission of Inquiry into the recent apartment fire in the Johannesburg CBD, Beaumont told Polity that there was nothing that happened in Marshalltown that was not known to all South Africans. He said buildings were being hijacked in CBDs and he believed there were no bylaws being enforced across the country, especially since the departure of ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba as the City of Johannesburg mayor. 

He said law and order had given up in such environments as slum landlords were renting out inhumane spaces for high fees, often to the very people who don't have documentation and the recourse. 

On the issue of energy, ActionSA chief strategist Andre' Coetzee said there was a need to break the monopoly of State utility Eskom and see independent power producer talks progress. 

Beaumont said there was a need for political will in such developments.

The party also believes that the billions of rands spent on diesel by Eskom could be used to provide households with solar panels, to reduce loadshedding by two stages.