“There are a lot of singing councillors… we all sing well, but capacity dololo (zero).” ANC chair Gwede Mantashe is not accustomed to holding back. His rebuke was aimed at party councillors attending a party municipal “roll call” session at FNB Stadium in September.
On the same day, President Cyril Ramaphosa angered party bosses by praising the DA’s running of municipalities in the Western Cape. “Those municipalities who do best are not ANC-controlled municipalities and I can name it here because there is nothing wrong with competition. They are often DA-controlled municipalities,” he said.
“We need to ask ourselves what it is they are doing that we are not doing. We need to be moving up the ladder of being good at what we do. It hurts me to see that our municipalities sometimes tend to move even backwards.”
Ramaphosa was chastised by his party over the comments and apparently sought to backtrack on them in subsequent interviews. But the tightening of rules for selecting candidates to be ANC councillors, MMCs and mayors is another indication that the party wants to up its game at municipal level.
This is not new. The ANC has changed and tightened the selection rules many times in the past, starting in 2011 when it introduced community involvement. Yet service delivery has generally regressed and the party has shed a great deal of electoral support.
The ANC is also not the only party to grapple with the quality of candidates it fields. The Sunday Times reported that a 2023 skills audit by the national co-operative governance department revealed, for instance, that 300 councillors from across political parties in KwaZulu-Natal could not read for meaning.
On Monday, the ANC’s electoral committee announced revised guidelines for the selection of councillors and, crucially, mayors — particularly for the country’s metros.
The new guidelines mark a decisive shift from the past, especially when it comes to mayoral candidates. For starters, these will be announced for metros and major cities well before the election. This means that — unlike in previous local government elections — the face of the party’s campaign will be its mayoral candidate, not necessarily that of the party president.
If there are glaring issues of our candidates having unexplained wealth … then we could trigger a lifestyle audit
— Chief Livhuwani Matsila
The party did want to announce mayoral candidates well in advance of the 2016 election, but this backfired spectacularly with protests in the City of Tshwane after Thoko Didiza, now speaker of parliament, was announced as the mayoral candidate. Clearly no groundwork had been done in advance.
Supporters aligned to former mayor Kgosientsho Ramokgopa took to the streets in protest. The ANC lost the metro to the DA in that election but regained it this year through a coalition with ActionSA and the EFF.
However, the ANC has also had positive experiences with parachuting leaders into key metros. eThekwini mayor Cyril Xaba, a former MP, is a key example. The metro’s performance has been steadily improving since he took over last year. eThekwini has been a pilot for many reforms advanced by the presidency and has been making progress under Xaba’s leadership.
The ANC faces a tough battle in the country’s eight metros, particularly in Gauteng. Former DA leader and current federal council chair Helen Zille has been named as the party’s mayoral candidate for Joburg. Word in the ANC is that it needs a comparable political heavyweight to stop her.
ActionSA is likely to field its popular leader, Herman Mashaba, who has led the city in the past. Insiders have told the FM that, despite a bruising contest unfolding internally in the ANC for the leadership of its Joburg region, the present contenders for the post — including current mayor Dada Morero — are unlikely to be chosen.
One lobby group has named former unionist and Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa as a possible contender to run for mayor on the ANC ticket.
Mayoral candidates for the metros, says ANC electoral committee secretary Chief Livhuwani Matsila, will be selected and processed by the party’s top seven leaders. He tells the FM that the rules are aimed at upping the party standards at local level.
“It was a deliberate intention to say we need to be very thorough in terms of establishing criteria and rules for the candidate selection process, learning from our past experiences, where there have been complaints about the quality and calibre of our councillors, especially at the leadership level.
“If you look at the mayors, the speakers and the chief whips, there have been some concerns in some areas. So we thought we should try to address those concerns by tightening the rules.”
The minimum qualification for the post of councillor is a matric qualification, but senior positions including mayors, MMCs, speakers and chief whips will require tertiary qualifications, coupled with experience as a councillor or at provincial or national government.
Independent lifestyle audits are also on the cards for would-be candidates whose standards of living appear out of sync with their salaries.
“If there are glaring issues of our candidates having unexplained wealth, where we see that people are richer than their levels of income, employment or occupation, then we could trigger a lifestyle audit and appoint reputable accounting and law firms to look at that situation,” says Matsila.
It remains to be seen whether voters weary of neglect by their representatives will respond in sufficient numbers to restore ANC dominance in municipalities.
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