President Cyril Ramaphosa’s declaration to a large audience of ANC councillors a few days ago, to the effect that they might have a lot to learn from the way the DA runs the municipalities it controls, has got him into trouble within his own chaotic party.
Thousands of ANC councillors were instructed to gather in Midrand on Monday ahead of what is beginning — say polls admittedly 18 months ahead of a vote — to look something like a catastrophe for the party in the 2026 local government elections.
Seldom would defeat have been more justly inflicted, though in the case of many metros and municipalities it is still not quite clear who the eventual inflictors might be. Opposition to the ANC is fragmented and fractious. The DA is a clear threat in many metros, but it faces its own demons in the form of the PA and ActionSA in many smaller towns. The PA completely demolished the DA in a ward by-election in the Eastern Cape last week.
But the elections next year (they could be delayed until early 2027) are more than just a test for the ANC. It is on the edge of a precipice, and could see its vote fall below 30% nationwide, well beyond recovery. Local elections are a different animal to national elections, but are nonetheless a useful guide to voter sentiment. And as the ANC has destroyed almost every waterless, litter-strewn city and town it controls, it is very late in the day now to do anything about it.
In all too many big cities it faces annihilation from both left and right. Ramaphosa’s appeals to the councillors before him in Midrand were way too late. The ANC has peopled councils of all sizes all over the country with party faithful, who mostly have had little clue how complex — or even simple — things work, and consequently how to fix them when they break.
Councils and mayors should be directly elected and be directly accountable to the residents they serve.
At the metro level — and this started decades ago — the ANC imperiously imposed mayors on ratepayers who barely knew them. It is the complete absence of accountability that it will now pay for. Councils and mayors should be directly elected and be directly accountable to the residents they serve. Local government is supposed to be the coalface of politics in any democracy, but here councillors are untouchable gods no matter how recklessly they behave.
In smaller towns it is much, much worse, because the properties they collect (or fail to collect) rates from are often owned by absent landlords who live in cities off the rents they charge in the country. In Transkei, and probably other former homelands under the old apartheid system, white properties were bought up at market rates and then given away for very little to politically connected elites. The home I grew up in, in then Umtata, was sold in 1974 to the Transkei Development Corporation for a small fortune then and sold on to a Dr Madikizela for a trifle.
It means small-town SA is in a double vice-grip — incompetent, unaccountable councillors and absent property owners who don’t care about the pile of garbage rotting on the pavement in front of the house.
Competence can make a difference. The ANC mayor of Butterworth in Transkei has gone a long way to cleaning up the crumbling town. Earlier, he did the same in Engcobo, not too far away. But he is one in a million, and the properties in his town are owned by people living in Sandton, Camps Bay or Gonubie, and they aren’t there to appreciate him.
The Eastern Cape may be safe for the ANC, but a tide has turned in the country and it’s way too late now for new plans. There’s a mighty judgment coming.
• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.
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