ANC Tells Voters: Don’t Forget Our Failures, Judge What Comes Next
JOHANNESBURG – The ANC has made an unusually direct admission heading into the 4 November local government elections: it has failed in areas where it governed, made mistakes and struggled to implement some of the very policies it now wants voters to trust it to deliver.
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa made the concession during the party’s manifesto launch in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, where he argued that the ANC should neither hide from its failures nor abandon its claim to the progress South Africa has made since 1994.
“We will not mince our words and not run away from the reality that confronts our people,” Ramaphosa told supporters. He said the party could acknowledge the progress achieved under ANC governments while simultaneously admitting there had been “weaknesses” and “failures”.
It is an important political calculation for a party entering another municipal election with service delivery likely to dominate the choices of voters. Instead of attempting to persuade communities that their frustrations are misplaced, the ANC is effectively acknowledging that many of the complaints it encountered during campaigning are justified.
According to Ramaphosa, communities repeatedly told the party that its problem was not necessarily a shortage of policies, values or political traditions, but implementation.
That admission goes directly to one of the ANC’s biggest challenges in local government. Municipalities are where national political promises eventually encounter broken roads, unreliable water supplies, electricity problems, refuse collection, housing backlogs and the administrative delays experienced by ordinary residents and businesses.
Ramaphosa argued that the next phase of ANC local government must consequently be measured by implementation and accountability. He promised that capable people would be deployed into municipalities and that officials and political representatives who failed to perform would be removed.
The party has also promised faster upgrading of informal settlements, delivery of title deeds and municipalities that make it easier rather than harder for local economies to function. Ramaphosa specifically criticised delays affecting trading licences and approvals, declaring that every metro should become “an engine of local development, not an obstacle to it”.
The ANC is simultaneously pointing to improvements it believes demonstrate government’s ability to correct major failures, including the absence of national load shedding for more than 460 days. Ramaphosa said seven of South Africa’s nine provinces were also free from load reduction, with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal remaining the exceptions.
But the party’s own candidate process has already attracted attention. The ANC had been expected to announce its mayoral candidates for metropolitan municipalities over the weekend but instead revealed shortlisted candidates, with final names expected next month.
Independent political analyst Goodenough Mashego suggested the delay was not necessarily unusual, noting that the ANC has historically been cautious about announcing mayoral candidates early. He also argued that intense competition in metros such as Johannesburg could encourage the party to consider deploying prominent political figures.
The larger question confronting the ANC, however, is whether admitting failure still carries political value when many voters have experienced those failures directly.
Ramaphosa appears to believe that acknowledging mistakes rather than defending them could help demonstrate that the party is serious about renewal.
“We do not ask people to forget what did not work,” he said. Instead, the ANC wants voters to judge whether it is willing to confront failure, correct mistakes, choose better leaders and enforce accountability.
That proposition will ultimately be decided outside the manifesto launch and campaign rallies. On 4 November, voters will determine whether acknowledging what went wrong is enough reason to trust the ANC with another opportunity to put it right.
Anyone with additional information about municipal service delivery, local government performance or issues affecting communities ahead of the 2026 local government elections can contact TownPress confidentially at press@townpress.co.za.