Political analyst Lukhanyo Vangqa says service delivery is not a priority for the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
He was reacting to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s January 8 statement at the weekend.
The ANC celebrated its 111th-anniversary in Bloemfontein on Sunday.
Vangqa says the list of the party’s priorities shows a departure from what the party’s January 8 statement used to be.
“Service delivery, the critical issue in the list of six priorities that were listed by the President on Sunday, it forms number four- of those priorities. The ANC obviously, from the list that we have been given, has the wrong priorities. “
“Their number one priority is the renewal of the ANC and this is a departure [from] what the January 8 statement used to be. The first January 8 statement that was issued in 1972, by President OR Tambo focused on the building of the nation,” explains Vangqa.
VIDEO | January 8 Statement hits and misses: Lukhanyo Vangqa and Dr Lumkile Mondi
Dysfunctional municipalities
Earlier, President Ramaphosa announced that the government will be repositioning the country’s dysfunctional municipalities to enable them to deliver services to their communities.
Ramaphosa says that the recently-completed 55th National Conference of the ANC has recommitted to ensuring that the government resolves the problems of political infighting, lack of finances and skills as well as corruption that are prevalent in such local authorities.
The Auditor General Tsakane Maluleke in her 2020-2021 report on municipalities gave just 16% of South Africa’s 257 municipalities a clean audit with 33 municipalities having been declared dysfunctional for their failure to meet their financial obligations and provide essential services.
Ramaphosa says, “We are going to go into these municipalities and put them right. We are also now going to be moving very quickly to take action against those municipalities that are dysfunctional because they are the center of government activity from an economic point of view, from a social point of view and from a delivery of services point of view.”
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