By Tim Cocks<\/p>\n
JOHANNESBURG, Jan 10 (Reuters) – South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday urged his co-ruling African National Congress to address its \u200bdismal record on providing basic services, ahead of local elections in which \u200cthe ANC’s share of the vote is widely expected to slide.<\/p>\n
Africa’s most industrialised country must hold \u200clocal elections before November, and the ANC often does worse in local polls than national, as voters vent their frustrations over leaky water pipes, sewage discharges and crumbling roads.<\/p>\n
“The first task for our movement in 2026 is to fix local \u2060government and improve services,” Ramaphosa \u200ctold his party at a televised event in Rustenburg, Northwest Province, to celebrate its 114th birthday.<\/p>\n
In the 2021 local election, the \u200dANC won less than half of the votes for the first time since the 1994 end of white minority rule, in what turned out to be a forerunner for \u200bnational polls less than three years later when the party lost its \u200cmajority.<\/p>\n
“Municipalities must … fulfill their basic obligations,” Ramaphosa said. “They must fix potholes, remove refuse regularly (and) provide clean water and sanitation”.<\/p>\n
The ANC was celebrated for unifying a country divided along race lines, and for one of the world’s most progressive constitutions and judiciaries.<\/p>\n
It punches above its weight diplomatically, bringing a genocide case against Israel \u2060and securing a G20 summit declaration despite a \u200bU.S. boycott.<\/p>\n
At the same time, its record on \u200bmore mundane tasks, such as repairing drains and staffing schools, has been poor.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa said chronic power shortages had ended, but some \u200dmunicipalities continued to have \u2060local outages. He pledged 54 billion rand ($3.28 billion) in state funding for water and power infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Though growth has improved, unemployment remains high, and many \u2060young people were starting to “question whether our democracy … and indeed our movement really work for \u200cthem,” Ramaphosa said.<\/p>\n
($1 = 16.4746 rand)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Tim CocksAdditional reporting by Siyabonga \u200cSishi in Rustenberg; editing by Barbara Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Tim Cocks JOHANNESBURG, Jan 10 (Reuters) – South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday urged his co-ruling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,7933,10081,2334,10082,10080,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-15384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-african-national-congress","10":"tag-basic-services","11":"tag-cyril-ramaphosa","12":"tag-dismal-record","13":"tag-local-elections","14":"tag-south-africa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}