Johannesburg – The head of investment and infrastructure in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office and the former mayor of Tshwane (Pretoria) Dr Kgosientso Ramokgopa has warned the ANC to get its house in order or risk losing power in 2024.
The former Gauteng economic development, agriculture and environment MEC identified power utility Eskom’s rolling blackouts ahead of last month’s local government elections as one of the key factors in the ANC’s worst showing in polls since 1994.
”There is a genuine and urgent need for the ANC-led government to act decisively to address the structural issues afflicting Eskom in order eliminate load shedding as a factor in the 2024 national and provincial elections,” Ramokgopa warned the governing party.
He said even the party’s membership lamented the actions of the country’s electricity monopoly by implementing load-shedding on the eve of elections.
”Eskom has been consistent over the years in advising that under-investments in the maintenance of existing generating assets and the inability to add 4000MW to the grid will result in rolling load-shedding,” he said.
According to Ramokgopa, the DA’s municipal elections slogan that it gets things done was not an affirmation of its governance credentials but intended to expose the apparent ANC failures.
”The perennial and stubborn internal factional battles crippled the party’s influence and its claimed leadership of society,” he explained.
Ramokgopa said the ANC went into the elections with no branches that met the constitutional definition of being in good standing and that even more telling branches had receded from active leadership role in communities and abandoned their political responsibilities.
He said ANC branches suddenly came to life during the list process to select candidates to contest the polls.
In his review of the ANC's poor performance in the local government elections, Ramokgopa said the government has become an extension of the party's factional battles and parasitic business interests, which has led to the rejection of merit, experience and denial of opportunities at the altar of factional loyalty the norm.
”The net result of this has been the haemorrhaging of skills in the public sector with devastating consequences to the service delivery agenda and the transformation project.
This practice takes other forms, including having key positions in government being occupied in an acting capacity for a protracted period because the acting incumbent who could have natural career ambitions remains beholden to the powers-that-be with the expectation of enhancing his/her chances of appointment,” he said.
Ramokgopa warned that factional tendencies prevented competent individuals, who have not pledged loyalty to the faction, from accessing opportunities in the state.
The ANC ally, trade union federation Cosatu, this week said it has witnessed an alarming deterioration in the party’s political fortunes.
”The local government elections outcomes are a huge cause for concern. They are not just an indictment on the ANC but on the alliance and the mass democratic movement as a whole,” Cosatu said.
The federation will push for all tripartite alliance partners to reflect on the results of the municipal polls individually and collectively.
”We do not have the luxury of time to misdiagnose or misunderstand the message that the voters have relayed to all of us.
It is obvious that voters are demanding fundamental economic transformation, and this time they do not want general promises and vague commitments, but they demand practical proposals and decisive action,” the federation noted this week.
loyiso.sidimba@inl.co.za
POLITICAL BUREAU