By Nco Dube | 18 September 2025

A second-term president unshackled from the fear of re-election ought to possess the backbone to speak unvarnished truths and take decisions that place the nation above party interests. When those truths breach party orthodoxy, they can serve as a jolt to complacent cadres and force genuine introspection. This week, President Cyril Ramaphosa did just that. From the stage of Soweto’s FNB Stadium, he delivered a public rebuke of his own governing party’s track record in municipal governance to thousands of ANC councillors assembled for their Roll Call Summit. Acknowledging that DA-run councils consistently outperform their ANC counterparts on core service delivery metrics. It was a bracing admission, one delivered in the full glare of the nation rather than behind closed doors.

Ramaphosa’s remarks echoed the Auditor-General’s latest assessments, in which DA-led municipalities dominated the top ranks for clean audit outcomes, infrastructure spend efficiency and debt recovery rates. In the 2023/24 financial year, nine of the ten best-performing municipalities received DA leadership, while many ANC-run councils were saddled with qualified or adverse audit opinions and soaring irregular expenditure. These audit outcomes translate into tangible consequences: communities under effective management receive reliable water and sanitation, well-maintained roads and efficient revenue collection to fund further improvements.

Yet data alone cannot capture the full picture. Across Cape Town, the city’s CBD and affluent northern suburbs boast clean streets, well-lit thoroughfares and tightly controlled budgets. Meanwhile township residents in Khayelitsha, Mitchells Plain and the Cape Flats endure rolling water cuts, broken sanitation infrastructure and skyrocketing crime. At a recent Khayelitsha imbizo, aggrieved residents forced a DA councillor off stage, demanding answers for persistent service failures in their area. In Gate 7 near Maitland Cemetery, months-long water and sanitation outages prompted community activists to block Voortrekker Road with burning tyres, demanding equitable access to basic municipal services.

These contradictions reveal a critical flaw in the DA’s approach. Its traditional support base of middle-class professionals and business interests has shaped policy priorities, resulting in responsive management in higher-revenue wards but chronic neglect in poorer, predominantly black areas. Informal settlements suffer from underinvestment in preventive infrastructure like drainage, fire breaks and street lighting thereby heightening residents’ vulnerability to floods, fires and crime. When disasters strike, emergency responses lag behind. During the summer of 2023, informal settlement fires in Nyanga and Delft claimed multiple lives and razed hundreds of shacks, exposing glaring weaknesses in risk-mitigation planning.

By contrast, there are standout exceptions that underscore the potential for equitable governance. In KwaZulu-Natal’s uMngeni Municipality, DA Mayor Chris Pappas has overseen a programme of cross-suburb upgrades that deliberately targets rural and township areas alongside wealthier suburbs. Despite coping with R260 million in electricity theft losses and high outstanding rates debt, his leadership collective instituted participatory budgeting, extended street-lighting projects to under-resourced villages and launched a mobile customer-care unit that travels to remote hamlets. Their transparent publication of budget allocations by ward has forced councillors to account publicly for service-delivery backlogs, earning praise from community organisers who say they finally feel included in decision-making.

This brings us back to Ramaphosa’s intervention at the ANC’s Roll Call Summit. For the first time, a senior ANC figure publicly conceded that the party’s municipal performance had fallen “way off course.” In so doing, he boosted the opposition’s argument while performing a rare exercise in internal accountability. He did not hide behind slogans or promise yet another commission of inquiry. He held up the DA’s achievements as benchmarks. Clear evidence that improved governance is possible when political will and managerial competence align.

Within the ANC, the reaction has been swift and polarised. Some cadres saw Ramaphosa’s comments as a betrayal, arguing that public finger-pointing ahead of local elections was tactical folly. Others welcomed the wake-up call, admitting that internal reporting mechanisms had long been “gamed” by provincial bosses keen to mask failures. Indeed, insiders confess that for years poor audit outcomes in key metros and district councils were glossed over by thick layers of political spin. Only by acknowledging hard truths in public can the party begin to repair its frayed relationship with communities who have lost faith.

The consequences of this moment are profound. Egos will bruise, and the ANC campaign for next year’s local elections faces heightened scrutiny. But Ramaphosa’s intervention also resets the terms of the debate. It signals that the ruling party must compete on the basis of demonstrated competence, not on liberation-era legacy alone. For voters, the message is clear: your councillors must deliver results, or face accountability at the ballot box.

Critically, this debate should not descend into a simplistic DA-versus-ANC trope. Both parties have qualities to commend and major faults to correct. The DA must bring its managerial strengths to bear in historically marginalised areas, demonstrating through equitable budgeting and targeted infrastructure investment that all communities matter equally. Meanwhile, the ANC would do well to institute routine public audits of municipal performance, empower technical experts over politicos in key decision-making roles and revive local anti-corruption units that were sidelined in favour of centralised investigations.

South Africans have borne the brunt of municipal decline for too long. Thirty-one years into our democracy, millions still fetch water from communal taps and endure blackouts and sewage blockages with little recourse. Chronic mismanagement, opaque procurement and the rapacious siphoning of public funds have left township roads potholed, sports fields neglected and clinics understaffed. For many, this toxic mix of neglect and corruption is a daily reminder that ANC loyalty offers no guaranteed shield against governance failure.

Ramaphosa’s public rebuke though, does not absolve him of his own controversies. His ANC presidential campaign in 2017 attracted questions over its financing, and his track record on anti-corruption has sometimes appeared selective, shielding certain cadres while targeting others. His own Union Buildings office has faced allegations of irregular expenditure, and he remains vulnerable to criticism for the slow pace of economic transformation. Yet on this singular occasion he rose to the stature of statesman, choosing candour over convenience and country over career.

If he sustains this approach, he stands to redefine the politics of accountability in South Africa. Imagine a political culture where public admission of deficiencies is celebrated rather than stigmatised; where leaders earn respect for integrity rather than enforce loyalty through patronage; where citizens judge politicians by what they deliver, not by what they promise. That is the future Ramaphosa alluded to, even if unwittingly.

As the ANC grapples with this moment of truth, citizens must play their part. Community organisations and civic movements should sharpen their municipal score-cards and hold councillors’ feet to the fire. Local media must spotlight service-delivery performance ward by ward, empowering residents with data to challenge empty rhetoric. And ordinary voters must remember that every household’s lived reality; running taps, streetlights at night, safe refuse removal; is shaped by the quality of local governance.

In the end, the competition between the ANC and the DA should not be about political loyalties or liberation myths. It should be a contest of ideas and execution: which party can engineer transparent budgeting, protect procurement integrity, mobilise communities for maintenance programmes and prioritise the historically excluded? Ramaphosa’s wake-up call reminds us that better performance is possible and that political affiliation should never stand between a citizen and decent public services.

South Africa stands at a crossroads. Municipal elections loom on the horizon, and parties will flood wards with promises. Yet the real test will come after the banners are taken down and the votes counted. Will councillors who campaigned on better service delivery deliver in turn? Or will they resume the cycles of neglect that have entrenched inequality and fuelled civic frustration?

In acknowledging the DA’s comparative strengths, President Ramaphosa has issued both parties a challenge. To the ANC, he has said: re-learn how to govern with accountability and competence, or cede more ground to opposition parties. To the DA, he has implied: prove that your achievements are not limited to high-revenue wards, but extend to every corner of our country. For voters, the correct response is neither blind optimism nor cynical despair, but vigilant engagement. Demand transparency, insist on equity and refuse to accept half-measures.

That, ultimately, is the litmus test of South Africa’s democracy. Not whether a party wins the most seats, but whether those elected can translate political power into tangible improvements in people’s lives. President Ramaphosa’s bold public admission is a welcome start. Now it is up to all of us, ANC, DA and citizens alike to ensure that his words bear fruit beyond the stadium steps and reshape our municipalities into engines of service, dignity and hope.

(Dube is a noted Political Economist, Businessperson, and Social Commentator whose insights are regularly featured on UkhoziFM and in various newspapers. For further reading and perspectives, visit: http://www.ncodube.blog)