ActionSA makes a spaza ban and a Durban immigration unit the price of its coalition support

ActionSA will make a ban on undocumented foreign nationals operating businesses in eThekwini, and a dedicated Durban Metro Police unit to enforce immigration by-laws, conditions of any coalition it joins after the November 4 local government elections.

The party’s eThekwini mayoral candidate, Zwakele Mncwango, set out both demands in a video statement on Sunday, as IOL reported on 2 November. He described them as non-negotiable and said they form part of a leadership framework adopted by ActionSA’s Senate, which governs how the party enters coalitions nationally.

“Illegal foreigners must not operate businesses,” Mncwango said in the statement.

The two demands are specific. The first is that no undocumented person be allowed to run a business in the city, a category the party’s video caption extends to spaza shops and inner-city trading. The second is that the municipality set up a unit inside the Durban Metro Police to enforce immigration by-laws and work with Home Affairs to identify undocumented people.

Mncwango said the party’s position has often been misread, and that its policy is aimed at undocumented and illegal immigration rather than at legal foreign nationals.

ActionSA, led nationally by Herman Mashaba, has built its 2026 local government campaign around immigration enforcement alongside service delivery, crime and youth unemployment. The party’s argument is that by-laws go unenforced in metros such as eThekwini, Johannesburg and Tshwane, and that this has let undocumented foreign nationals trade without permits while South Africans struggle to obtain trading licences.

That argument lands on ground that has already been moving in Durban. The City’s Business Licensing Unit and Metro Police have run recent operations targeting unlicensed businesses in the Durban CBD, the Point and township areas. Business forums have also raised concerns about spaza shops trading without health and safety compliance.

The timing matters. No party is expected to win an outright majority in eThekwini, which puts ActionSA in a position to trade its support for concessions. The party says the same conditions will apply to any suitor, the ANC, the DA or the IFP, and that it will only work with parties that share its position on illegal immigration and law enforcement.

Mncwango is a former DA leader in KwaZulu-Natal who joined ActionSA in 2022. He is contesting the mayoralty of a metro where the coalition arithmetic, rather than the party’s own vote share, will decide how much of the framework he can actually deliver.

What the party has not set out is how a municipality would establish the immigration status of a trader, or how a metro police unit would work alongside Home Affairs, which holds the mandate for immigration enforcement. The framework as described sets the demand. The mechanism would be negotiated after the vote.