Mbalula: Zille's Joburg candidacy 'will be tested at ballot box'
ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula says the party is not concerned about DA heavyweight Helen Zille entering the race to become Johannesburg mayor.
Zille, the chairperson of the DA’s federal council, was announced as the party's mayoral candidate in Soweto on Saturday.
She is a former mayor of Cape Town and a former premier of the Western Cape.
Zille, who was born and raised in Johannesburg, has vowed to improve service delivery if she is elected mayor following next year’s local government elections.
The announcement comes amid renewed pressure on the ANC and its mayor, Dada Morero, over poor service delivery.
Speaking at an ANC councillor meeting on Sunday, Mbalula said the party doesn’t concern itself with the choices of other political parties.
“At the end of the day, that will be tested in the ballot. And so it is the choice of their political party, so we are not in the business of commenting about the choices of other political parties. We don't expect political parties that are our opponents to speak good about the ANC,” he said.
Mbalula added that the party has acknowledged the shortcomings of its councillors, saying many of the councillors have been engaged in practical training and academic programs that enable them to perform effectively and efficiently.
“We have trained our councillors, and many of them have responded to that question of capacity. When we go to the communities and ask people to be voted for in the wards and all of that, they are voted by the people based on their activism, and some of them indeed don't have the necessary capacity, but we train them, and the majority of them have responded well.
“Here in Gauteng, we can give you a good statistic which we will give in the coming months about the status of our members and all of that and who have paid serious attention to their own development, and that is quite encouraging. So the question of capacity in local government is key and important.”
Mbalula added that the clean audits obtained by DA-led municipalities do not necessarily equate to better service delivery.
He said there are many parts of the Western Cape where residents are also complaining about poor government services.
“The DA is not doing well in the Western Cape. In terms of service delivery, we know, members of the ANC across the length and breadth of our country and the public understood very clearly what the president was talking about,” Mbalula said, referring to remarks by ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa that ANC councillors should not be shy to learn from their DA counterparts in Cape Town.
“The president was not heaping praises on the DA. He was referring to the Auditor General's outcome.”
ALSO READ:
