A political storm has erupted following comments by African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa that opposition-run municipalities are better governed, leading to accusations of political opportunism from his own party.
The controversy stems from an address Ramaphosa made to ANC councillors yesterday, in which he stated that the party could learn from the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) management of certain municipalities, specifically naming Cape Town and Stellenbosch.
“Those municipalities that do best are not ANC controlled municipalities,” Ramaphosa was quoted as saying. “And I can name it here because there’s nothing wrong with competition. They are often DA controlled municipalities.”
The DA was quick to seize on the remarks, framing them as a direct admission of failure from the highest level of the ANC. A DA spokesperson stated that Ramaphosa had “confirmed what many South Africans already know,” that the DA is superior at running local governments.
“The president… made it clear to ANC councillors if you want to have good governance, go and look what the DA is doing,” the DA spokesperson said. They attributed the ANC’s “huge downward trajectory” to a failure to deliver basic services.
However, the ANC has sharply criticized the DA’s reaction, labeling it as opportunistic. An ANC spokesperson clarified that the President’s comments were not an endorsement of the rival party but a call for internal improvement through “benchmarking.”
“The president is a president of the ANC [and] has nothing to do with the DA. The DA is excited, is opportunistic,” the ANC spokesperson said, calling the interpretation “very unfortunate and political opportunism which must be stopped.”
The debate quickly moved to the metrics used to define good governance. The ANC spokesperson argued that context is crucial and that clean audit outcomes from the Auditor-General—a key measure of financial health—do not automatically equate to effective service delivery on the ground.
The spokesperson pointed to ANC-led municipalities like Ethekwini, which they said had achieved five clean audits, and others in Swartland and Johannesburg that they claimed had “much better audits than many of the municipalities… governed by the DA.”
The DA conceded that a clean audit is not the sole measure of success but insisted the link to service delivery is powerful.
“There’s a big correlation between having a clean audit and delivering services,” the DA spokesperson argued, stating that a poor audit outcome paves the way for “bad decisions and bad implementing in a municipality.”
The most recent Auditor-General’s report appears to support the DA’s broader point, having given clean audits to 41 municipalities, with the majority being DA-run. Conversely, of the seven municipalities identified as badly run with no signs of improvement, six were found to be under ANC control.
Despite the figures, the ANC maintains it is addressing its shortcomings. The party says it acknowledges where it has failed and insists that new interventions will turn its performance around.