Ramaphosa tells councillors to emulate DA municipalities, fix water leaks in 48 hours, and put communities’ needs above self-interest.
In reading the riot act to ANC councillors yesterday, President Cyril Ramaphosa admitted frankly that the best-run municipalities and towns in the country are where the DA governs – and he urged his party’s councillors to follow the DA example.
Addressing what was effectively a crisis meeting of thousands of councillors at FNB Stadium in Soweto, Ramaphosa said: “It is usually painful each time when the auditor-general comes to report to Cabinet and they put up their report and those municipalities that do best are not ANC-controlled municipalities, and I can name it here because there is nothing wrong with competition, they are often DA-controlled municipalities.”
He urged councillors to “go and see what Cape Town is doing”, noting that he felt there was “nothing wrong” with that.
Ramaphosa tells councillors to emulate DA municipalities
He added: “It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities tend to move even backwards and you are the people who can improve that.”
His talk came after the party has acknowledged that service delivery at local government level – and out-of-control corruption in councils – was one of the reasons for the party’s shock loss of its majority in last year’s general election.
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He said councillors must realise they will be held accountable for their performance – because the country’s citizens had made it clear that failure would not be tolerated.
However, Ramaphosa wouldn’t not go as far as threatening to fire errant councillors, referring to action that the party would take as “intervention”.
“Firing or not firing will depend on the reports that we have got and the evaluation we have done. I wouldn’t want to call it firing, but intervention. There will be intervention, you will see, in most of the municipalities that are underperforming.”
Councillors lack ‘capacity’ – Mantashe
At the gathering, ANC national chair Gwede Mantashe criticised the party’s councillors, saying they lack “capacity”.
He reprimanded the councillors for being disruptive during the meeting.
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“I know that there is a lot of singing, councillors, but there are no councils. You all sing well, but capacity dololo.
“Comrades who are councillors, leaders of the ANC, who make noise when a meeting is underway, what kind of leadership is that?
“Ideally, when a dome like this is full of councillors, we would be saying that is the biggest resource the ANC has. The resource that fills this dome is the resource of the ANC, that is what makes a difference between a collapsing ANC and a renewed ANC,” he said.
Ramaphosa told the councillors they have the important work of representing the ANC at community level.
“We cover every area of South Africa, from the eastern seaboard to the western seaboard. From the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. From the northern part of our country to the southern part of our country, along the Agulhas sea,” said Ramaphosa.
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“You are the people, comrades, who have the responsibility, the power and the authority to fundamentally transform our society.
“The transformation of our society relies on you, it relies on what you do where our people live. Today, we have got the full cohort that governs our country at national, provincial and local level.
“What this means is that things like water supply, things like leaks must be fixed. It is unacceptable that, as councillors, as leaders of the people where we live, we can have water leaks, sewage running in the streets and not take any action.”
Fix water leaks in 48 hours – president
Ramaphosa said councillors must deal with problems like sewer leaks within 48 hours.
“Because, comrades, this is very simple: if there is such a leak in your house where you live, if there is going to be sewage leaking into your yard, as a councillor, you will make sure that you attend to it in a short space of time,” he said.
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Ramaphosa said councillors must put the interests of communities ahead of their own interests.
“We are servants of the people, and we serve the people, it is their interests that matter way above those of our own interests,” he said.
Ramaphosa added: “We must not protect individuals who are implicated in corruption activities.”
Empty promise going nowhere
He said law enforcement agencies must be allowed to act against those who break the law, even among the ANC ranks.
But political expert Sandile Swana said this is another empty promise that is going nowhere because previous plans failed and many were not implemented at all over the years.
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Swana said, currently, at least 66 municipalities are dysfunctional, 31 are in financial distress and the infrastructure report card indicates that the worst road infrastructure is in these municipalities.
He said issues raised by the previous auditor-general, Kimi Makwetu, pertaining to lack of service delivery, financial mismanagement and graft in municipalities had not been resolved since.
Reports and recommendations of the auditor-general had not been implemented for over 10 to 15 years, with neither accountability, nor consequent management being applied.