In a bid to counter his own narrative that the DA runs the best municipalities, President Cyril Ramaphosa has now changed his tune, arguing the DA must learn from Senqu Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape.
Ramaphosa came under fire last month when he told his party that ANC councillors should learn from the DA. His comments caused considerable damage to the ANC, with many from his party baying for his blood and calling for his exit.
Since then, Ramaphosa has changed the narrative, claiming that while the DA’s Cape Town municipality has one of the best audit outcomes, it has failed to transform.
Speaking in parliament on Tuesday, Ramaphosa said he had seen horror scenes in the townships of Cape Town. He said attention that was given to black areas was “less than desirable”.
“And I have compared Johannesburg and Cape Town. Johannesburg, in the past 10 years or so, has really made a great effort to upscale Soweto where I grew up, which was really horrible. But now Soweto, in the main, has been largely upgraded because of the attention that the City of Johannesburg paid [to it].”
He said many of south Africa’s cites were facing an influx of people.
“As more and more people come in, the pressure on service delivery is heavy when it comes to refuse removal, when it comes to water delivery and electricity distribution .... So, people just form informal settlements and there is weak enforcement of bylaws.”
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis downplayed the president’s statement, telling TimesLIVE that he was merely trying to do damage control after he dared to speak the truth when he said that Cape Town and other towns governed by the DA are examples to be emulated.
“In fact they are the only examples of progress and good governance in South Africa. Where his party governs, there is only decay, corruption and collapsed services. That is the sea of ruin and failure that he presides over.
“The simple, irrefutable fact is that, despite the enormous challenges of poverty and unemployment we face, also thanks to the ANC, Cape Town is steadily moving forward while every other city in the country is moving backward. That is the simple choice every voter faces,” Hill-Lewis said.
Ramaphosa said efforts must be made to address the challenges as they arise.
The ANC has failed to arrest its electoral fortunes since the 2016 local government polls, where it lost some of its key metros.
In Soweto, one of its historically strong voting grounds, the ANC failed to receive the numbers it needed to reclaim the Johannesburg metro in the 2021 local government elections. Its current Johannesburg mayor, Dada Morero, has been criticised for failing to provide services.
“It should never be that more attention is given to the more affluent areas at the expense of the places where lesser-income people live, and this is exactly what we are seeing here in Cape Town. And that is why I referred to the budget analysis, because in the end, while the financial statements ... may well show a picture, but you need to analyse precisely where the expenditure is going.
“Here in Cape Town, the analysis of those who look at the budget tell us that on a per capita basis, the city is performing worse than many others. So that needs to be corrected.
“I say it as president, not to dismiss the efforts that are being made. I say it so that all our cities, all our municipal entities, must focus on the corrective measures that we need to take.
“So it is not, for instance, to take Cape Town and dump it in the dustbin .... Let us all try to pick up the areas where there has not been much development.”
The Sunday Times previously reported that ANC leaders told the publication that Ramaphosa’s words would continue to haunt the party even after the local government elections, predicting that the DA would use the president’s statements in their campaign in 2029.
Another insider said Ramaphosa was wrong to chastise ANC councillors in the glare of the media, as this humiliated those who were working hard in their wards and municipalities.
In an effort to appease his detractors, he now says that the DA must learn from the ANC’s high-performing municipalities, mainly in the Eastern Cape.
“So even Cape Town must go and learn there, even Johannesburg must go and learn there. How are they doing it? Why are they achieving such great results, and why are they enforcing or enhancing development in their little towns? So we all have to learn from each other, and it is through learning from each other that we become better. And that’s precisely the point I was also making at that event,” he said.
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