In a stark admission of failure, African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a direct warning to thousands of party councillors, telling them to “shape up or ship out” during a major address in Johannesburg. The speech, delivered to over 4,500 councillors, comes ahead of next year’s local government elections and highlights the party’s growing concern over poor performance in ANC-led municipalities.
President Ramaphosa did not mince words, pointing specifically to the superior audit outcomes of municipalities controlled by the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) as a painful indicator of the ANC’s shortcomings.
“It is hugely painful each time when the auditor general comes to report to cabinet… those municipalities that do best are not ANC controlled municipalities,” Ramaphosa stated. “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.”
The party’s chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, echoed these concerns, stating that councillors in South African municipalities often “lack capacity,” which continues to hamper service delivery.
In response to these remarks, governance expert Zukiswa Kota from Rhodes University offered a sobering analysis, suggesting it may be too late for the ANC to change its institutional culture. Kota, a steering committee member of the Open Government Partnership and coordinator of the Imali Yethu Coalition for Open Budgets, expressed skepticism about the timing and sincerity of the president’s message.
“An immediate response is really that the president… is sharing fact for the most part. None of it should be surprising,” Kota said. However, she questioned the motive behind the pronouncement so close to an election, stating that meaningful change should not be tied to electoral cycles.
“Too late to change culture? Potentially, yes,” she stated bluntly. “It shouldn’t be at this point, you know, this close to the local government elections and it shouldn’t be tied really to elections if it is about meaningful change.”
Kota further argued that while Ramaphosa correctly emphasized the oversight role of councillors, his framing risked conflating political oversight with the administrative duties of municipal officials, a distinction critical to the professionalization of local government.
She also warned of deep-seated complacency within the public service, where job tenure often outweighs performance. For Ramaphosa’s words to have any impact, Kota insisted they must be followed by concrete action, including holding underperforming councillors accountable.
“If it does result in heads rolling and… serious consequences… then that is very important,” she said. “But will that happen? Your guess is as good as mine. And in fact, to date, we’re not seeing enough of that happening.”
Kota underscored the dire state of local governance, describing it as a crisis that often involves “life and death situations” for citizens due to failed service delivery. She emphasized that councillors hold a fundamental responsibility to challenge unrealistic budgets, interrogate official reports, and truly represent the needs of their communities—a role she believes is too often neglected.
The critical commentary from both the party’s president and an independent analyst points to a significant moment of reckoning for the ANC as it prepares to face voters in municipalities it admits are being outperformed by its political rivals.