Cyril Ramaphosa is like that awful parent who keeps threatening to take away his child’s candy but constantly caves. The result is an enfant terrible who goes on to become an impossibly narcissistic adult. Or president of the US.
Take Ramaphosa’s most recent foray into governing. On Monday, he met with about 4,800 ANC municipal councillors to read them the riot act about destroying the country’s municipalities; they should be providing services, not stealing from the poor.
“There is no room for self-enrichment and patronage,” Papa Ramaphosa intoned gravely.
It was a meeting necessitated by the fact that most of South Africa’s 257 municipalities are unmitigated disasters, as the recent auditor-general report into local government illustrates.
Over three years to 2023/24, municipalities rang up R81.59bn in unauthorised spending, R87.03bn in irregular spending, and R17.65bn in fruitless and wasteful expenditure. They ended the year owing R11.29bn to the government, and incurring water and electricity losses of R37.28bn due to neglected infrastructure.
Municipalities owe more than R100bn to Eskom, and R25bn to water providers.
It’s so much money, it almost sounds meaningless. But a billion is a staggeringly large amount: 1-billion seconds is 32 years, for example. So we’re talking about a lot.
The problem is existential for the country – and for the ANC. As Ramaphosa told the gathered officials: “It’s either service delivery or death.”
If that sounds melodramatic, it’s not. The ANC got a bollocking in the 2024 national election, winning just 40.2% of the vote, and it has belatedly realised it’s about to get stuffed again in next year’s local government poll. This is the consequence of building a trust deficit the size of Donald Trump’s ego.
Cyril has evidently been rolled out to do damage control.
First order of redemption: cop to the problem.
Here’s a taste: “Too many of our municipalities fail to deliver even the most basic of services, either due to incapacity or mismanagement,” he told the ANC national executive committee at the weekend.
He added: “Officials who are meant to assist citizens are often not capable of addressing people’s concerns or, at times, work against the people. Sometimes even elected representatives get involved in acts of corruption or criminal activities, working against the people.”
Sometimes.
Second order of redemption: promise to do better.
“If people who are deployed get involved in acts of malfeasance and stealing money from the public purse, they must be removed without fail. This is the real heart of accountability and consequence management.”
Ramaphosa makes it sound so novel, you’d swear he’d just discovered gravity.
In any event, in a new phase of local government candidate selection, the ANC will now “produce capable, qualified candidates of impeccable moral standing”.
Now that would be novel.
Action schmaction
Of course, for real redemption, this all needs to be followed by action.
Don’t hold your breath. See, Cyril has said all these things – or variations on them – before. Look no further than the eight January 8 statements he’s delivered.
Here’s 2018: “We shall work to restore the integrity and credibility of the ANC. We need cadres who are committed to serve no other interest than the interest of the people, who seek no advantage for themselves … and who safeguard public resources.”
And here’s 2019: “Where necessary we have taken measures to deal with cadres who have undermined the integrity of the movement and ethical standards expected of public representatives of the ANC.”
Over the next few years, he promised action on errant deployees too.
“We remain resolute in our efforts to stamp out deviant and abhorrent practices,” he said in 2019. In 2021, he said: “We will not tolerate members of the ANC who are implicated in crooked practices.” And in 2024: “Criminals, corrupt, careerists and factionalists will find themselves outside of the ANC.”
You get the picture.
And don’t think the promise about a better quality of cadre is new either.
Back in 2020, he was banging on about focusing on the capabilities, commitment and integrity of councillors and local government officials. By 2021 he was all over “deploying the most capable cadres to positions of responsibility, managing public resources ethically”.
And by 2022, the ANC had apparently put in place “mechanisms” to “choose capable and fit-for-purpose cadres as councillors, mayors and senior office bearers”.
Ditto 2023 through 2025. Only, it’s been about as effective as a two-toed sloth in an egg-and-spoon race.
So here we are. A party at risk of giving itself a repetitive strain injury through meaningless verbiage – with a side order of early electioneering.
It makes Ramaphosa’s promise of a 90-day turnaround barely believable.
The ANC has apparently given its deployees marching orders, with three months to fix the top 10 service delivery issues under a six-point plan. Think war rooms, dashboards and “consequence management”. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Ramaphosa would do well to remember the ANC’s own words, from back in 2017 (and which he quoted with gusto in 2022): “Bland reassurances that are then negated by the very conduct of leaders and members will worsen the decline.”
Bland reassurances indeed.
Top image: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Gallo Images/Phill Magakoe; Rawpixel/Currency collage.
Sign up to Currency’s weekly newsletters to receive your own bulletin of weekday news and weekend treats. Register here.
