In a stunning and brutally honest critique of his own party’s governance, President Cyril Ramaphosa has laid bare the systemic failures of African National Congress (ANC)-controlled municipalities, admitting they are consistently outperformed by opposition-led ones and are plagued by incompetence, corruption, and a disconnect from the people they are meant to serve.
The president’s remarks, delivered at a meeting of ANC councillors, constitute one of the most damning indictments of local government from a sitting head of state, revealing an administration in crisis within its own ranks.
A “Hugely Painful” Reality Check
The central confession that anchored Ramaphosa’s address was his acknowledgment of the superior performance of municipalities controlled by the Democratic Alliance (DA). He revealed that each report from the Auditor-General to cabinet is a source of deep pain, as the top-performing municipalities are “often DA controlled.”
“It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities sometimes tend to move even backwards,” Ramaphosa told the assembled cadres, explicitly naming the DA-led metros of Cape Town and Stellenbosch as examples the ANC should learn from. “We need to ask ourselves what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing,” he said, urging his party to embrace the competition.
A Litany of Failures and “Cooking the Books”
The president did not shy away from the granular details of the failure, detailing a collapse in basic administrative competence. He disclosed that the Auditor-General had reported that a significant number of municipal financial statements are not even prepared internally but are outsourced, and even then, they return “often wrong.”
“What it means is that we do need to get capable people… Unless we want the books to be cooked,” Ramaphosa stated, before issuing a forceful, if belated, decree: “I would say away with cooking of the books. Cooking of the books must end today.”
He further criticized the ANC’s catastrophic handling of procurement, which has been a primary conduit for state capture and corruption, leading to abandoned projects. “We have uncompleted house buildings or bridges that are not completed and all that,” he said, outlining a familiar national landscape of stalled and failed service delivery.
Councillors as “Tourists” and a Call to “Come Back Home”
Perhaps the most scathing criticism was levelled at the ANC’s own public representatives. Ramaphosa accused councillors of being “tourists” in the areas they are deployed to, noting that citizens “mark you down” if they know you do not live among them.
He lamented the abandonment of door-to-door outreach, insisting it must be revived not for elections, but for genuine engagement. In a remarkable admission of captured and corrupt officials, the president directly addressed those who had “fallen into the temptation of being captured by business interests, by syndicates.”
“Today this is a time that we give you to free yourself. Come back home,” he pleaded, implying a widespread infiltration of criminality within the ANC’s local structures.
A Crisis of Their Own Making
The speech, while framed as a call to action, serves as a stark confession of three decades of failed local governance under the ANC’s dominant leadership. The admission that the party must now look to its political rivals for a blueprint on basic service delivery and financial management underscores the depth of the crisis.
For millions of South Africans enduring water shortages, crumbling infrastructure, and rampant corruption at a local level, the president’s words will be seen as a validation of their daily struggles—and a stark reminder that the primary obstacle to progress has been the governing party itself. The burden now lies on the ANC’s 4,768 councillors to prove they are “dedicated, capable, accountable leaders” and not the captured tourists their president has described.