Ethekwini mayor Zandile Gumede had to be dumped because outraged voters in the metro were losing faith in the ANC over her failure to deliver basic services.
The party's provincial secretary in KwaZulu-Natal, Mdumiseni Ntuli, told the Sunday Times that metro residents made their anger clear during campaigning for the May 8 elections.
With the 2021 local government elections around the corner, the party could not allow the rot to continue in the biggest metro still under its control.
The ANC provincial executive committee (PEC) this week used a report compiled by the provincial treasury and the department of co-operative governance to fire Gumede two years before her five-year term was due to end.
Gumede, an ally of former president Jacob Zuma, also faces charges of corruption and is out on bail of R50,000.
Ntuli said action was taken against the mayor and her exco because the party's support had waned since she took up the post in August 2016.
"We went to a very difficult campaign [for the May elections] where before we could even say to people, 'Vote for the ANC because we have a plan'. People were saying, 'Before you implement that plan can you deal with what is in front of me now?'
"That is a very painful way to do the campaign because you must first explain yourself in the context of what you are failing to do, rather than motivating people and canvassing them to endorse a plan you have and to support it," Ntuli said.
The situation was so dire that the party had not been able to campaign in some areas in the metro, he said.
"There are areas … where people were saying the ANC cannot be telling them that they will do all these things when you can't remove the filth and rubbish in front of their houses.
"And people were saying, 'You can't say you will lead us into things like job creation and a better life because that better life has to be seen somewhere, and if you can't even clean our streets, how are you going to do that?'"
The provincial government report that the PEC cited in sacking Gumede listed service delivery failings in eThekwini and said the municipality was plagued by poor governance and political instability.
"We are convinced that the direction the municipality was taking was compromising the ANC," Ntuli said.
"There was a possibility that if we do not take any action now, we might end up with a loss of faith in the ANC.
"[This] would probably have had consequences for the local government elections. We don't believe we were going to lose the metro, but it was evident that the confidence of our people in the ANC was in decline, and that is a problem for us even if we win."
Gumede had fallen out of favour with the majority of members of the PEC because she remained a staunch Zuma supporter. While these members had accepted Cyril Ramaphosa as party president, Gumede and her allies are believed to be among those resisting the outcome of the December 2017 Nasrec conference at which Ramaphosa triumphed.
The provincial government report said the "significant" increase in service delivery protests in the metro had been caused by, among other things, "service delivery matters that have been raised with the municipality with no progress; noncompliance and poor performance by the municipality on public participation …; poor working relationship between councillors and ward committee members; and that council failed to address a crisis in the solid waste function".
The report noted that the municipality's response to protests had been inadequate.
Between December 2018 and May 7 protests had been sparked by concerns over crime, water supply interruptions, backlogs in housing and sanitation services, and problems with refuse removal.
The report said executive committee decisions had not been implemented and that financial oversight had been compromised by the disbanding of the finance portfolio committee.
The investigation by the provincial government found there were tensions within the ANC. This was borne out by demands from Gumede's supporters that she be reinstated as mayor.
Ntuli said the axing of Gumede and the entire executive council was not a sign of panic ahead of the 2021 local government elections but a necessary reaction to the state of the municipality.
In the general elections in May, support for the ANC in eThekwini dropped to 55.55% from 65.39% in 2014.
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