Good will reach out to the "vast majority of people who are not racist" to make their voices heard, the new party's leader, Patricia de Lille, has pledged.

De Lille introduced her eight-week-old party's manifesto on Tuesday in Cape Town, without going into much detail. The event was also broadcast on Facebook.

De Lille started off drawing a line in the sand against racism, saying the "politics of racism" was alienating South Africans from a common identity.

"Our country needs leaders with the courage to tackle socialised and structural racism and sexism – and those leaders have been lacking," she said.

She acknowledged that it was often difficult to speak about racism in South Africa, but said political leaders had to have the courage to do so.

"Good will lead South Africans to truly build a future that knows and understands our past, but does not have to be trapped by it," she said.

De Lille said that, in 2017, 65% of South Africans lived in urban areas, and that it was predicted that 80% of South Africans would do so very soon.

"That is why Good is proposing to turn government on its head – taking power away from a central system put in place by apartheid and, instead, devolving functions to towns and cities," she said.

Exactly how this would be achieved, given that the Constitution and other legislation delineates the functions of the three spheres of government, remained unclear.

Good secretary general Brett Herron admitted that cities did not have the powers that the party believed they should have, which include transport, economic development, policing and dealing with climate change impacts.

Good's manifesto can be divided into four main areas: spatial justice – which De Lille views as her party's main unique selling point – economic justice, social justice and environmental justice.

De Lille also weighed in on the land debate, saying land restitution had been "painfully slow", but that she didn't believe the problem lay with Section 25 of the Constitution.

"It is scandalous that expropriations are still being conducted in terms of the apartheid-era Expropriation Act of 1975," she said.

She said they supported Section 25 in its current form, which already allowed for expropriation without compensation.

"Our policies and plan to fix South Africa continue to be constructed and we will update these as we make progress," De Lille said.

She said the full version of Good's plan would be on their website https://www.forgood.org.za/ soon.