JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG — The African National Congress (ANC) blames coalition politics for a severe decline in governance and service delivery across several municipalities, pointing to fractured alliances as the primary catalyst for administrative failure. As the country gears up for the November local government elections, the party is urging voters to move away from multi-party administrations, arguing that political instability over the last decade has severely compromised essential public services.
Speaking to the media, ANC spokesperson Dickson Masemola outlined the organization’s stance on the administrative crises plaguing major metropolitan areas. Reflecting on the past ten years—from 2016 to the present—Masemola stated that the “mismanagement of the interplay of different diverging ideological expressions” within these coalition governments has directly and negatively impacted financial administration and basic service rollout.
According to Masemola, the root cause of these newly formed, systemic issues is poor leadership. “Everything stands and falls on leadership,” he emphasized, noting that the volatile coalition dynamics characterizing South Africa’s major cities have created permanent challenges that simply did not exist prior to these political arrangements.
The party specifically highlighted the governance struggles in the City of Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City, and Tshwane, where coalition politics have frequently resulted in shifting alliances and stalled municipal progress.
Addressing the electorate, Masemola stressed that the party is making a renewed appeal not with arrogance, but with the “greatest sense of humility and respect to the voters.” Ultimately, the spokesperson maintained that the ruling party is the only organization equipped with the solutions to reverse the current trajectory. Masemola called upon the people in municipalities plagued by coalition politics to agree that a unified mandate is necessary to restore stable, effective local government and resolve the ongoing service delivery challenges.
