African National Congress (ANC) president Cyril Ramaphosa has openly acknowledged that some of the country’s best-performing municipalities are not under his party’s control.
Speaking at the FNB Stadium in Soweto before more than 40,000 ANC councillors, Ramaphosa admitted it was “painful” to recognise that many of the municipalities praised for effective governance are run by the Democratic Alliance (DA).
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While the ANC holds a majority of municipalities nationwide, the party also governs some of the most troubled ones, including Maluti-a-Phofung and Ditsobotla, which continue to face serious governance and service delivery challenges.
Ramaphosa Urges Councillors to Improve Performance
Ramaphosa told councillors that improving audit outcomes and strengthening municipal finances must become a top priority.
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“Comrades, it cannot and must not be acceptable that in our country we have and we control a number of municipalities.
“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 said.
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Ramaphosa went further, calling on ANC councillors to examine what the DA is doing differently.
“And there is nothing wrong with us saying we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing, we want to go and see what Stellenbosch is doing, how do they craft everything.
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“We need to be moving up the ladder or being good at what we do, we cannot forever stay at the bottom. 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,” Ramaphosa said.
His remarks signal a rare admission by the ANC leadership that opposition-run municipalities are outperforming those under the ruling party’s control.
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