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Political parties are now gearing up for the upcoming 2026/7 local government elections and electioneering is now on flight. Each party will point to what they have done and to what they can offer the masses to win their votes.
The African National Congress (ANC) had a self- reflectory meeting in Johannesburg during their Councillor’s roll-call gathering, led by its President Cyril Ramaphosa. Ramaphosa addressed the pressing issue of non-service delivery in municipalities, the disheartening state of municipalities.
Thousands of ANC Councillors were present to get their marching orders from the president. Ramaphosa expressed concern over the state of municipalities, though the quality of Councillors is improving as they are getting educated by their numbers, the state of municipalities remain a concern and a major frustration for citizens.
Municipalities under the ANC are mostly a scene of discouragement and impulsive towards investment. According to Ramaphosa, street lights are not working, there are potholes everywhere, sewerage leaks and streets are dirty.
The ANC President, in trying to encourage Councillors to improve their performance in service delivery in their respective municipalities, he compared them with that of the Democratic Alliance (DA), of which turned out to be shot in the foot of the ANC and an endorsement for the DA.
“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. We need to ask ourselves, what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing? And there is nothing wrong with us saying, we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing, what Stellenbosch is doing.
How do they craft everything, we need to move up the ladder of 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, sometimes tend to even move backwards,” said the ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa.
To this, the DA did not waste any time, they posted posters on their social media platform with images comparing the ANC run municipalities with that of the DA. They posted messages that the ANC is endorsing the DA and have been positioned as the best political party to run municipalities.
The DA took photos of defunct community swimming pools, placed them side by side, the ANC one is under-maintained and dirty, while the DA one is green and blossoming with life.
This has come as a major booster for the DA, they even circulating the video of Ramaphosa saying this about the DA.
Going into elections, the DA is expected to milk this one, to ride the praise song wave by the ANC to advance their bid to run municipalities across the country. In this case, the ANC seems to have scored an own goal.
