The African National Congress’s (ANC) secretary general Fikile Mbalula believes some representatives of the party played a role in collapsing municipal coalition governments. He made the remarks in a post-SONA briefing on Friday.
“Local government is in distress. Some of it is of our making as a political party, the ANC. We in the ANC admit that our public representatives have undermined the mandate of people and the party within these governments and have brought about instability and poor service delivery,” he told media assembled at the Fire & Ice Hotel in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town.
He also blamed “narrow interests” of smaller and larger parties alike for the collapse of coalitions, adding that disintegrating coalitions in major cities, such as Johannesburg, had a negative impact on service delivery.
“In other instances, they collapse because of narrow interests and a drive for power. Even smaller political parties, when it comes to coalitions, they want to rule. Bigger political parties are left in the periphery. Those political parties must give space to prioritise service delivery,” he said.
“Coalition arrangements have not worked in major municipalities where coalitions collapse, leading to a lack of service delivery.”
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Mbalula also warned malingerers in the party to up their game. Referring to a decision to deploy members of the national executive committee to observe more than three dozen municipalities.
“Local government is important. The times of buddy-buddy, people failing on duty, and people doing as they wish are over. The ANC will have a service delivery team at its headquarters. We will be watching and taking action,” he warned.
A day prior, President Cyril Ramaphosa said more than half (163 out of 257) municipalities were either “dysfunctional or in distress due to poor governance, ineffective and sometimes corrupt financial and administrative management and poor service delivery”.
“Government is implementing a number of interventions to address failures at local government level and improve basic service delivery,” he said, in his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
