ANC unveils action plan to strengthen local government ahead of elections

Ahead of a roll call of over 6,000 ANC councillors and mayors set to gather in Johannesburg on Monday, ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled the party's Action Plan to make local government work better for the people.

This comes as the ANC's National Executive Committee (NEC) met over two days in Boksburg to assess the state of local government, with a key focus of the gathering being to find solutions to widespread service delivery failures in municipalities across the country.

On Saturday, Ramaphosa urged municipalities to take decisive action against corruption, adding that even though corruption is most prevalent within municipalities, there is often a lack of political will to hold officials accountable for maladministration.

According to the President, the meeting will culminate in a Roll Call meeting of the parties' over 6,000 councilors and mayors at the FNB stadium, who are set to account to the ANC NEC on the work they have done since taking office after the 2021 local polls.

“The focus of the plan is to strengthen local government. The ANC has developed a draft Action Plan, which must be adopted by this NEC. This plan will consolidate existing strategies, ensuring decisive progress in implementing our commitments in ANC-led municipalities,” Ramaphosa stated.

ANC spokesperson, Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, said councillors would be required to table their own turnaround plan for their municipalities, with the party saying there will be serious consequence management for those who fail to deliver services to the people.

"After tomorrow's meeting, councilors will walk away with clear marching orders that will be released by the President of the ANC. Those marching orders are going to be anchored around several pillars. One of which is a consistent fight against malfeasance in local government and any form of private corruption, including extortion, and any public representative who does not hold dear their oaths of office.

"They will also walk away with a clear turnaround plan for affected municipalities...This also includes a strong push towards consequence management, where it ought to form part of the action plan," she said.

Ramaphosa said once adopted, the Action Plan will be shared with  deployees, setting out clear, measurable tasks both in government and the ANC.

Political analyst Sandile Swana lamented the appointment of morally and technically unfit councillors, who failed to improve service delivery in municipalities. 

"As we have gone through the years, we have discovered that there are not enough numeracy and computer literacy, and general skills for councilors to consume and process business plans, proposals, reports, and budgets to make intelligent input. Also, our leaders are morally incompetent. As you have seen in the Free State, it has been devastated by this moral incompetence and technical incompetence, and criminality of the councilors that have been appointed," he said.

Swana said he hopes some of these problems would be addressed by the meeting and Ramaphosa's action plan, as malfeasance continues in local government.

"We have those performance problems that need to be addressed in the meeting. We also have the problem of incompetence that will not be addressed by the next election. It may take ten years to get to the correct levels of competence.

"The ANC has to remove those who are technically unfit, those who are morally unfit, and those who are high risk in terms of criminality, bribery, and corruption," he said.

siyabonga.sithole@inl.co.za