By 
Dr Roy Jankielsohn, the Democratic Alliance (DA) Leader in the Free State is calling on the President of the African National Congress (ANC) Cyril Ramaphosa to apologise to the Free State following the meeting of the National Working Committee (NWC) and the Provincial Executive Committee (PEC) over the weekend.
Jankielsohn says the reason for the high-profile ANC visit to the Free State, that included President Cyril Ramaphosa and the party’s National Working Committee, is a result of the self-inflicted leadership and political decay that has decimated the province.
He says the ANC in the Free State requested intervention from their national structures as one of the outcomes in an internal February 2025 PEC report. Interventions that have failed include a PEC POLEDU sub-committee that was responsible for political education and cadre deployment.
“The reliance on cadre deployment as an instrument of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR), while admitting that the quality of their cadres has deteriorated, remains the main reason for poor financial management and service delivery collapse in provincial government departments and municipalities across the province.
The continuous structural disintegration of the ANC as the governing party in the Free State has, through cadre deployment, manifested itself in all provincial government and municipal administrations. The ANC admits to the poor quality of cadres, which remains the root cause of state capture and corruption, a 61% poverty rate and unchecked unemployment in the Free State. However, Fikile Mbalula indicates that incompetent cadres must be redeployed instead of being removed from positions of power,” said Jankielsohn.
The DA Free State’s message to President Ramaphosa is the following:
The ANC in the Free State cannot self-correct which is why he and his NWC are in the province and their support is in freefall.
The ANC must drop cadre deployment and ideological political education and focus on building financial and administrative capacity among deployed cadres until the DA can replace them with competent individuals.
The President must prepare the ANC psychologically for differently configured governments in the 2026 Local Government Elections and 2029 Provincial Elections in the Free State.
The President must, on behalf of the ANC, apologise to our people in the Free State who suffer from the indignities of unemployment, lack of water, non-functional sewage systems, filthy streets, poor roads, lack of decent healthcare, and a 40% school drop-out rate that the ANC has inflicted on us.
The ANC correctly alludes to the DA as a growing force in the Free State in their internal PEC report. The DA has been at the forefront of the fight against state capture and corruption in the province. The DA has tested job creating economic policies and programmes which, where the party governs, improve service delivery, employment and the dignity of residents. The DA is ready to take over and improve the lives and livelihoods of our people in the Free State which the ANC has in the last few decades failed to do.
