President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged ANC councillors to seek advice from DA councillors of well-performing municipalities on how they are doing it.
Ramaphosa was speaking on Monday at FNB Stadium, where the party summoned more than 6,000 councillors to give them marching orders to address service delivery ahead of the 2026 local elections.
We need to ask ourselves, what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing? And there is nothing wrong with us saying, 'we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing'
— President Cyril Ramaphosa
He said it was painful that each time the Auditor-General presents reports to cabinet it highlights that ANC municipalities are not doing well.
“Those municipalities that do best are not ANC-controlled municipalities, and I can name it here, because there is nothing wrong with competition.
“They are often DA-controlled municipalities. We need to ask ourselves, what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing? And there is nothing wrong with us saying, 'we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing'.
“We want to go and see what Stellenbosch is doing. How do they craft everything? We need to be moving up the ladder of being good at what we do. We cannot forever stay at the bottom. It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities sometimes tend to move even backwards. And you are the people who can improve that,” he said to the councillors.
The party aims to find solutions to widespread service delivery failures in the country's 257 municipalities that are led by the ANC.
Ramaphosa said it was unacceptable to have water leaks and sewage leaks where ANC councillors reside.
“You should be the first to know, and you must do something about it within 48 hours.
“You cannot allow what you cannot tolerate to be done to the people who elected you to your position. You must get to a point where you say 'I will not sleep until the water or sewage leak is attended to',” he said.
Meanwhile, ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe accused the party's councillors of being good at singing and have no capacity to do what is required of them.
“I know that we have a lot of singing councillors, but we have no councils.You all sing well, but capacity dololo [nothing] Eh?... That is the council we are having. Comrades who are councillors, leaders of the ANC, who make noise when a meeting is under way. What kind of leadership is that?” he asked.
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