By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) has established a special task team, led by former Johannesburg mayor Parks Tau, to look into the problems in the municipalities.
In a press briefing on Monday, the ANC’s acting spokesperson Zuko Godlimpi said the party noted that problems at the local government level were a contributing factor to its poor performance at the national elections.
“South Africans are no longer interested in the distinction between the different spheres of government. They are making the moral argument that it’s one state and one government, the problems must be attended to by everybody,” he said.
“That’s why the president [Cyril Ramaphosa] said yesterday that the ANC is now going to focus very seriously on the local government sphere, starting with Johannesburg.”
The meeting comes in the wake of the party’s electoral decline this year, with its share of the vote falling below 50% for the first time since 1994. The loss of its parliamentary majority resulted in the ANC forming a government of national unity.
Godlimpi said NEC members would be sent to struggling municipalities that have been hit by instability, adding: “There will be instances where an NEC member is deployed, there will be instances where a regional or provincial leader is deployed. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.”
The ANC faced its steepest decline in metros, particularly in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, which have been plagued by prolonged governance instability.
Godlimpi said the party was discussing concrete plans to turn its electoral fortunes around ahead of the 2026 local government elections. He said it would refer back to the accountability framework agreed upon last year, which called on secretary general Fikile Mbalula to run performance reviews of all NEC members on a continuous basis.
“We must be in a position to say, what are the tasks for the first four weeks? What are the tasks for the next eight and what assessments [are] there so that we can then get those reports in real time across, including to understand what the constraints are?” Godlimpi said.
“If there’s the slowness in progress, we can’t be told after a year or two years that ‘no, we couldn’t deliver water there because these are the problems we face’. We must get that understanding in a short period of time so that we can trigger a support measure from the higher spheres of government.”
It could no longer be “business as usual” for the party. “What has changed is that the ANC lost [support]. You can no longer be lacklustre when you’ve lost your majority. There are things that the ANC has known are problematic but could have easily been complacent about how we respond to it. The ANC can no longer afford complacency.
“The urgency of the situation arises out of the objective reality that the ANC is losing elections. So, we have no choice but to move with speed and do things better.”
Godlimpi said the party would focus its attention on the City of Johannesburg where the “political situation has become unsustainable” and “something has to give”.
The metro has become a political battleground, with parties demanding the resignation of mayor Kabelo Gwamanda following the ANC’s agreement with ActionSA after its relationship with the Economic Freedom Fighters soured. Since local government elections in 2021, the city has seen some five mayors come and go.
Al Jama Ah leader Ganief Hendricks meanwhile says Gwamanda will stay put as long as he has the mandate from the ANC national leadership to lead the nine-party Johannesburg coalition.
“They’ve got to come up with a mayor who’s acceptable to the nine political parties. At the moment, Al Jama Ah has the mandate from the ANC’s top leadership, which the Joburg regional leadership is not happy with, and they haven’t changed my mandate.
“Unless they change my mandate, nothing’s going to happen.”
The Al Jama-Ah leader says previous engagements with both the ANC’s regional and provincial leadership became heated.
“We had a meeting at Ruth First House with the ANC’s regional committee—which threw its toys out of the cot, maintaining its position of 2023—and the provincial secretary. That meeting ended with us threatening our relationship, and they now understand they have to wait for their national leadership to make a decision…
Godlimpi said the poor delivery of services was deepening inequality that could result in social instability and cause a significant number of citizens to stop voting.