ANC prepares for local government elections in KZN with new task teams

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal will go to next year's local government elections with task teams.

This was announced by the party’s provincial convener Jeff Radebe on Monday when he formally introduced the newly appointed 11 regional task team leaders, who he said have the mammoth task of preparing for the local government elections.

Radebe directed the task teams to go back to their respective regions to renew and rebuild the ANC and prepare to win municipalities for the party. He also directed them to appoint branch task teams in their regions and get them ready for next year’s local government elections.

“Comrades, you have a mammoth task that is to go back to your regions, renew and rebuild the ANC. To carry this responsibility, we are giving you two weeks to draw a programme of action, align with our local government and service delivery summit resolutions,” said Radebe.

Among the regional leaders are new political principals for the embattled eThekwini and Msunduzi municipalities. The ANC has entrusted former eThekwini Human Settlements Committee head Nigel Gumede to oversee the work of eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba and the party caucus. While Gumede will be supervising the party deployees in eThekwini his mind will also be on how to ward off the Umkhonto weSizwe Party’s threats of taking the only metro in the province following last year’s national general election, where Jacob Zuma’s party decimated the ANC.

Besides its political problems, the ANC has been taking a flak from the eThekwini’s residents for poor service delivery which saw President Cyril Ramaphosa dispatching his presidential team to assist in the administration.

Another ANC focus area was on the struggling Msunduzi Local Municipality in Pietermaritzburg with the appointment of the little-known Nathi Mdladla to steer the municipality out of administrative troubles. The party preferred Mdladla over both regional chairperson Mzimkhulu Thebolla and regional secretary Samora Ndlovu who were excluded from the top five positions that were allocated to the regional task team.

Thebolla who is also Msunduzi's mayor did not make it to the top five positions allocated to the task team, which will oversee the work of the ANC deployees in the six municipalities under the party’s Moses Mabhida region. He will now have to account to Mdladla.

The municipality under these two leaders has been besieged by administrative and poor service delivery problems which led to Premier Thami Ntuli’s intervention with the appointment of his own task team.

Ntuli appointed former Public Works MEC Ravi Pillay to head the intervention team. The municipality and the region are one of the strategic centres of the ANC, it has the second biggest budget after eThekwini and the region also is the second largest in the province. 

willem.phungula@inl.co.za