ANC confident ahead of local government elections
The ANC is confident going into the local government elections saying it expects to dominate the polls. The ruling party is even predicting a clean sweep in Gauteng, a province some experts predict it will struggle.
The ruling party is hosting a series of breakfast briefings to outline progress made and challenges encountered during the current term of government as well as over past 15 years of local government.
The ANC said it has made tremendous progress in bringing democracy into communities and increasing access to basic services.
ANC Head of Policy, Jeff Radebe, addressed the first session on Monday and said there's been tremendous progress in creating better communities over the last 15 years.
"We can say without fear of contradiction that today in 2016 we have a stable, coherent structure of government at local level."
Radebe stated that government has implemented a back-to-basics approach and it has found traction across government.
"This approach puts people first," he said.
Radebe said a substantial piece of the 2015/16 budget has been allocated to upgrading human settlements. In 2015 over R6 billion was spent in various cities on public transport networks.
According to Radebe, access to electricity had increased from 77 percent to 88 percent over the past few years; water from 80 percent to 86 percent and sanitation from 62 percent to 80 percent.
Despite these strides, Radebe stated that the ANC is facing huge challenges in financial management.
"There are widespread discrepancies. Support for poorly performing municipalities needs to be intensified," he said.
The ANC said one of its priorities was a more hands on approach in monitoring the work of municipalities. However, active participation of South Africans was very important.
Radebe said local governments were still struggling to address the following issues:
- improving billing systems and revenue collection,
- servicing of aging infrastructure,
- quantifying and eliminating losses in water and electricity,
- improving the performance of water service authority to handle changes in demand,
- disaster management,
- strengthening public confidence in local government.
Despite these problems, Radebe said: "We can say without contradiction that we have a fairly coherent, functional, efficient local government."
The ANC is expected to launch its election manifesto in April.
Edited by Marius van der Walt