‘DA run municipalities better, learn from them’ Ramaphosa tells ANC councillors

President Cyril Ramaphosa has admitted that it pained him that the DA-led municipalities always outperform the ANC ones in delivering services, urging party councillors to up their game. 

Addressing the ANC’s roll call for councillors event at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, Ramaphosa told the party members to learn from other municipalities that are run in better ways than they are. 

“I can name it here because there's 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's 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,” he said.

He added that they should learn from their craft to move up the ladder, saying “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. The audit outcomes are important.”

According to Ramaphosa, the Auditor General, told him that a number of the ANC-led municipalities' financial statements were not even prepared at the council level but outside. 

He emphasised that the ANC should deploy capable people to run local government. 

“Our country is not short of people who understand numbers. It's not short of people who understand accounting. Let us go and get people who understand accounting,” he said. 

Meanwhile, ANC national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, addressed his party's council members, saying that while they are good at singing and creating noise, they are not good at managing councils.

“I know we have a lot of singing councillors but we have no councils. You all sing well but capacity dololo [nothing],” he told a rowdy crowd. 

kamogelo.moichela@iol.co.za 

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