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President tells allies to emphasise wins

Luyolo Mkentane

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on the governing tripartite alliance to “emphasise” the ANC’s successes in government when campaigning for the local government elections.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on the governing tripartite alliance to “emphasise” the ANC’s successes in government when campaigning for the local government elections.

Delivering the keynote address at Cosatu’s four-day central committee meeting ending on Thursday, Ramaphosa said municipal elections on November 1 should be seen as a “watershed moment for our democracy and enable us to reposition the local government sphere of government.

“The candidates who will be elected following these elections will be required to lead clean, efficient and service deliveryfocused local government structures that will be committed to serving the interests of our people,” he said.

The ANC president made the remarks a few hours after the Constitutional Court dismissed the DA’s application to declare the Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC’s) reopening of its candidate nomination process for the elections as unlawful.

The judgment will benefit the ANC as the party missed an earlier deadline to submit full candidates lists in 35 municipalities, also in crucial metros such as Tshwane, Cape Town and Mangaung.

“We welcome the decision of the Constitutional Court to allow the reopening of candidate registration to enable all South Africans to freely participate in the elections and be able to vote for eligible candidates of their choice and to stand,” Ramaphosa said.

The ANC expects of those chosen to lead local government to “be people of integrity and ... capable and qualified to serve our people and to improve service delivery in all the municipalities of our country”.

The local government sector has been dogged by corruption allegations, poor service delivery, maladministration and malfeasance for years.

In the 2019/2020 financial year the number of clean municipal audits declined from 33 to 27, while fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounted to R3.47bn and irregular expenditure was at R26bn.

“On a political level, the ANC has begun to interview mayoral candidates in an effort to ensure we entrust competent and capable cadres with this important responsibility.

“We are institutionalising and standardising this practice and it will continue following the forthcoming local government elections,” Ramaphosa said.

“We need to ensure that senior officials, especially municipal managers and chief financial officers, and other technical officers, are suitably qualified and subject to more rigorous qualification criteria in order to be appointed.”

Greater consistency is needed in applying discipline and consequence management, both to recognise and learn from good performance and to correct poor performance, Ramaphosa said.

The ANC will launch its election manifesto in the capital city, Tshwane, on Monday.

“This will be a short and targeted campaign and we must all be on the ground mobilising as many people as possible to vote for the ANC. We must emphasise our successes. The ANC government has succeeded in making this a better country and we need to back this assertion with objective facts,” Ramaphosa said.

“The movement must be humble and admit where we have made mistakes. In admitting our mistakes, we must provide people with information about the strategies we are implementing to address our mistakes and bring wrongdoers to book.”

He told the Cosatu meeting that the alliance must “convince” the people that the ANC “will continue to work towards building a better life for all”.

Meanwhile, the social and economic package unveiled in April 2020 to cushion the country against the effects of Covid-19 drew nearly threequarters of a million people into jobs, and has been “hugely beneficial”, Ramaphosa said.

The coronavirus pandemic battered the national economy, the 7% contraction in 2020 of which led to a loss of about 1.4million jobs, and a 34.4% unemployment rate the highest in the world.

But the stimulus package has been able to “draw up to 700,000 into job opportunities during this period of the pandemic”, Ramaphosa said.

Defeating the Covid-19 pandemic remains a priority, he said, calling on Cosatu to “convince”, mobilise and persuade workers and as many people as possible to be vaccinated.

Cosatu is against mandatory vaccines at workplaces.

The president said the government respects the right to bodily integrity and all other constitutional rights. “However, this must be balanced against the right to a safe working environment and it is correct to take measures to ensure the economy can reopen in a safe manner that protects all workers.”

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2021-09-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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