The African National Congress (ANC) has called on its councillors in municipalities to stop wasting public funds. This is one of the resolutions adopted by the party during its two-day Local Government Intervention Workshop in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg.
Various stakeholders in local government attended the workshop. They discussed the implementation of a plan aimed at tackling service delivery challenges in all municipalities.
The ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula addressed the media at the end of the workshop on Monday.
“We shouldn’t hear that a group of councillors of the ANC are having a workshop in KZN and it is R 5 Million and is business as usual. We shouldn’t allow that as an organisation. Deviation is betrayal of the revolution.”
Mbalula added, “We shouldn’t allow where our councillors and municipalities like in KZN in Umsunduzi, there is a problem there of roads of water and sanitation and you hear that here is an ANC municipality sponsoring a team. The ANC government cannot project itself as caring less about what is around us.”
VIDEO: Chairperson of the Local Government Intervention Sub-committee, Parks Tau on the workshop:
Mandela statue
The ANC has acknowledged that the unveiling of statues of the late former President Nelson Mandela among people languish in poverty is a contentious matter.
Last week on Madiba’s birthday, the Nelson Mandela Museum unveiled two human size statues, that cost over three-million-rand, in the Eastern Cape.
Some community members in the area criticised the unveiling of the statues, saying this happened despite the falling apart of the municipality’s infrastructure. Mbalula said, “We don’t have to be reminded by our critics that that thing is wrong. We have honoured Madiba and we will continue to honour him but Madiba where he is he must be turning in in his grave wherein his name is misused and millions of rands are spent on statues.”
“We should be spending money on preserving Madiba’s heritage. Kids must be learning about Madiba’s Long Walk To Freedom in the libraries and everywhere in the municipalities not on statues. No, the ANC cannot in 30 years be accounting for statues we have to account on something better.”
Crime and corruption
Regarding crime and corruption, Mbalula said the workshop resolved on programmes to ensure communities fully participate in the conceptualisation of such projects and defend them against syndicates that seek to hijack such projects for themselves.
“The workshop focused on practical solutions such as the creation of boreholes as well as recycling of waste water to ensure sustainable water supply…Rebuilding and revitalising local government, the nucleus of cooperative and participatory governance, is important given the known systematic and structural challenges in municipalities.”
He claimed the governing party’s cooperative governance framework, in the strategic direction for 2023-24, hinges on the following pillars: functional inter-governmental governance systems, effective internal corporate governance processes, and basic services delivered to all citizens and communities in an efficient manner.
