Cyril's right: Shape up or ship out

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa may have put the cat among the pigeons when he told hundreds of party councillors gathered in Johannesburg this week that the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) governs better in municipalities. Ramaphosa urged his comrades to look at what it did right and learn from the opposition.

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Party chair Gwede Mantashe appeared to agree when he called out the councillors, who were defying him by singing while he spoke, saying it was this indiscipline that was at the centre of the party's poor performance in local government.

They sang well, Mantashe said, but they had no councils to show for it, and had no capacity to run municipalities.

The ANC had a day earlier concluded a national executive committee meeting, where it discussed service delivery problems and sought to map out a way to ensure that it performs better in next year’s local government elections, or face the bloodbath it experienced in last year’s general elections, where its support dropped to 40%.