African National Congress (ANC) National Chairperson Gwede Mantashe has publicly defended President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent acknowledgment that some of the country’s best-run municipalities are governed by the Democratic Alliance (DA).
President Ramaphosa made the initial comments earlier this week while addressing a gathering of over 40,000 ANC councillors at the FNB Stadium in Soweto. The remarks, which appeared to praise a political opponent, sparked significant discussion, prompting Mantashe to clarify the context during a campaign event in Cape Town.
Mantashe, who was leading a campaign initiative to address the high cost of living, asserted that the President’s statement was not an endorsement of the quality of work done by DA councillors themselves. Instead, he stated it was a specific reference to audit compliance and financial management.
“No, he didn’t talk about councillors. He talked about compliance and the audit outcomes,” Mantashe said. “It’s real that 60% of DA-controlled councils are having clean audits. That is about compliance and audit and that is about financial management.”
The ANC Chairperson contrasted this with the performance of municipalities led by his own party, acknowledging a area requiring improvement. “Only 8% of our municipalities that we lead have clean audits,” he stated. “That talks to weaknesses in our own financial management of councils and that is no shame in that. We must talk about it and try to improve on that and improve our performance.”
Mantashe emphasized that the ANC’s focus should be on enhancing its own governance rather than launching campaigns aimed at discrediting the DA.
“The mistake we must never do is to do a program to decry… to decry a DA to prove that DA is wrong. That is not the issue,” he explained. “The issue is to prove that the ANC is right. That is what we should be doing. Forget about the DA.”
When questioned on the timing of the ANC’s cost-of-living campaign in the DA-led Cape Town metro, Mantashe dismissed any suggestion that it was related to next year’s local government elections.
