While some top ANC leaders want President Cyril Ramaphosa booted out for his controversial comments about ANC municipalities being outperformed by DA-run municipalities, national chairperson Gwede Mantashe is standing by Ramaphosa.
Ramaphosa told ANC councillors at a roll call meeting in Soweto last week that they should learn from DA-run municipalities about how they produce clean audits.
But according to weekend reports, some top leaders in the party believe that Ramaphosa’s comments have sabotaged the party’s local government campaign and want him to step down before next year’s elections.
Mantashe defends Ramaphosa
But during his visit to the Western Cape on Sunday, Mantashe said ANC councillors must stop sulking and focus on improving.
“There is nothing wrong in comparing an ANC council with a DA council and audit outcomes are important because they are about financial management, which is an inherent part of running a municipality. They are doing well on that.
“Our responsibility is to pick up service delivery issues where they matter. It is the completeness of the service provided that is important. It is no less important to run your finances properly as an ANC councillor,” he said.
In areas such as the Western Cape, Mantashe said the DA is in charge of municipalities while the ANC is burdened with looking after poor areas where they have ward councillors.
He said even under these circumstances ANC councillors must work hard to change the lives of residents in their wards.
“They have the responsibility to pick up their socks and take the fight to the DA,” he said.
Mantashe has also been criticised for his comments at the same ANC event where Ramaphosa was speaking last week.
He called into question the capabilities of ANC councillors. This is because some of them were unruly during the meeting.
“I know we have a lot of singing councillors, but there are no councils. We all sing well but capacity dololo,” he said.
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Another Ramaphosa ally, Fikile Mbalula, also defended him at a meeting with councillors in Johannesburg on Sunday.
He said he believes Ramaphosa’s controversial remarks will not affect the party negatively.
“The people will follow the truth and that is what is important for us. We are busy now, we are getting into roll calls with our public representatives and all of that. If they want to deal with the ANC let them deal with real and concrete issues,” he said.
The ANC’s prospects
Political analyst Ntsikelelo Breakfast believes that the ANC will not perform well in the next local government elections.
“Nobody is going to save the ANC. The voters are young people now. They will not vote for the ANC because of liberation credentials. They vote according to service delivery. If you do not honour the social contract, you will get punished.
“It is worse at local government because voter turnout is low and when voter turnout is low the ANC gets punished,” he said.
Ramaphosa’s remarks caused a lot of confusion, said Breakfast.
Ramaphosa backtracks
“After that roll call there were some blunders that were made by leaders of the ANC, the president and Mantashe. Both of them spoke as if they are outsiders,” he said.
Last week, Ramaphosa backtracked on some of his comments. He told the SABC that the DA should also learn from ANC-run municipalities.
“I should have talked about the full equation. The full equation is that there are compliance issues and transformative issues. Both need to go hand in hand and when I made the example, I should have made a comprehensive one,” said Ramaphosa.
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