President Cyril Ramaphosa. (@myANC/X)
President Cyril Ramaphosa conceded on Monday that South Africa’s best-run municipalities are those governed by the Democratic Alliance (DA).
He made the admission in an address to ANC councillors from across the country who gathered in Johannesburg for what the party has named “the roll call” ahead of next year’s local government elections, where it could suffer the same bruising loss of support sustained in last year’s general vote.
“There’s nothing wrong with competition … [the best run municipalities] are often DA-controlled municipalities. We need to ask ourselves what it is that they are doing that is better than what we are doing,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with us saying we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing, what is Stellenbosch doing, how they craft everything.”
In a sign that the ANC is worried about 2026, it summoned all its councillors to take stock of its prospects in the face of service delivery problems in municipalities under its control and the threat posed by rivals such as the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party of its former president, Jacob Zuma, which grabbed a large chunk of its electoral support last year.
To tackle the problem of incompetent councillors, the ANC says all will now be required to attend a mandatory course and should have at least have a matric qualification.
The roll call comes after the party’s special national executive committee (NEC) meeting, in Ekurhuleni at the weekend.
Ramaphosa said the ANC needed to move up the ladder in terms of performance. He said it hurt him deeply to see how the ANC had taken some municipalities backwards, with many of them failing financial audits.
“The audit outcomes are important. I’m told by the auditor general that the number of our financial statements are not even prepared at the council level but they are prepared outside. Even when they come back, they are often wrong.” he told councillors.
“The cooking of the books must end today. We must get people who can draft the books properly and present an audit outcome that is going to be online, with what is expected.”
He urged for improved compliance with spending regulations to ensure that money meant for service delivery reached citizens.
“We must ensure that when it comes to compliance, rules that are there are followed and those that we procure to, we must do a proper assessment, there’s proper review of whether they will be able to do the work,” Ramaphosa said.
ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe, took a swipe at the councillors, saying the ANC had a lot of singing councillors whose municipal work was below par.
“We all sing well but capacity — dololo [nothing],” Mantashe said.
Gauteng ANC co-convenor Panyaza Lesufi said it was crucial to protect councillors as well whistleblowers exposing corruption in municipalities and state institutions.