‘Without you doing anything, we are dead,’ Ramaphosa tells local ANC councillors

About 30 minutes into President Cyril Ramaphosa’s speech to ANC councillors from across South Africa, a sharp noise interrupted his address. Someone had opened a fire escape at Johannesburg’s FNB Stadium, which set off an alarm.

“I’m not going to keep quiet,” said the President.

The alarm bells are ringing for the ANC just over a year before the local government elections, which must be held between November 2026 and January 2027.

The party has nosedived in recent polls, particularly in the metros, and it summoned every single one of its councillors from across the country to Johannesburg for a “roll call” on Monday, 15 September.

Around 4,600 of the ANC’s nearly 5,000 councillors made it to FNB Stadium. Ramaphosa framed the event as “a turning point for the entire movement”.

The ANC won 45.59% in the 2021 local government elections, down from a high of 66.3% in 2006. Of SA’s eight metros, in 2021, it only won over 50% in Buffalo City and Mangaung. According to DA polling (which Helen Zille has cast doubt on), the ANC is predicted to take only 20% in Joburg in the next local government elections, down from 33.6% in 2021.

The party still leads coalitions in all of the metros except for Cape Town, but this will no longer be the case should its decline continue.

‘Improve or die’

Ramaphosa started by telling ANC councillors that the positive work being done in municipalities wasn’t being recognised.

“We often just talk about the corruption and the non-delivery of services, but we rarely talk about the vast opportunities that exist at local government level,” he said. “We hardly ever talk about the good work that many of you are doing in your councils.”

He acknowledged the party’s challenges in local government, referring to infrastructure and service delivery problems, and deteriorating audit outcomes. He even acknowledged that DA-run municipalities were often the best performing.

Read more: Auditor-General sounds alarm on governance crisis in SA’s biggest cities, gives Cape Town the thumbs up

“This meeting is therefore a turning point for all of us. Let us do what we need to do,’’ Ramaphosa said. “Without you doing anything, we are dead; we might as well pack up.”

The President condemned corruption, patronage, laziness and arrogance, but failed to offer a clear plan on how the party would deal with such problems.

The “roll call” event followed a special National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting over the weekend, where the ANC developed an “action plan” to rebuild local government, with party leaders emphasising service delivery improvement, good governance and tackling corrupt and factional elements.

Read more: Eight in 10 South Africans think country’s heading in wrong direction, new survey shows

Talk, but what action? 

“This thing of the ANC of thieves must come to an end,” the ANC’s Frank Chikane told the councillors at the FNB Stadium event.

“I would like to say this [event] is extraordinary,” said Chikane. “Comrades, you cannot have a sewer running down the street when you have a branch and a ward councillor in that area.”

The ANC secretary-general, Fikile Mbalula, said the event “was a powerful demonstration of accountability in action”.

He claimed, “The number of stable municipalities has increased. Targeted measures to address municipal debt with Eskom and water boards have yielded results in restoring financial viability in certain areas. Presidential working groups in eThekwini and Johannesburg have provided valuable governance support.”

But as of 31 March 2025, municipalities owed a staggering R131.8-billion to creditors, up from R106.7-billion in the same quarter of 2023/24. The National Treasury has threatened to cut off funding for defaulting municipalities.

Read more: Emfuleni crisis highlights local government debt as Treasury cracks the whip

In Johannesburg, where Mbalula claims a presidential working group is making progress, many residents still suffer from water shortages and the city’s water crisis is far from solved.

Six months since Ramaphosa announced the formation of a task team to tackle the city’s problems, there’s been little change. The city’s “Bomb Squad” — a high-powered implementation impact team — has been missing in action.

Read more: ‘Scarily predictable’ — Joburg water crisis reaches boiling point as tyres burn and rubber bullets fly

Marching orders

Several councillors at Monday’s event told Daily Maverick it was a turning point, that the party had acknowledged its problems and was taking action.

Siyabonga Nala, a councillor from eThekwini, said, “Today was more [than just] about giving us marching orders. It was about the call for us to turn things around, but also always to be in touch with our communities.”

The event kicked off the ANC’s local government election campaign, but it appears unlikely to change anything for residents in ANC-run municipalities. The party is no longer fighting to win majorities in most of the metros, but it stands a chance to keep control of their budgets if it can limit its recent losses and form coalitions as a leading party.

As political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki told Daily Maverick on Monday, “This is the ANC mobilising its deployees because there is an election coming. The ANC president is trying to tell the country that the ANC is concerned about the operations of the municipalities because of the failures of service delivery. That’s all electioneering, it’s not important.” DM