‘Nothing wrong with comparing’: Mantashe defends Ramaphosa’s DA praise

Johannesburg

Pretoria – ANC national chairperson Gwede Mantashe has come out strongly in defence of President Cyril Ramaphosa after criticism of his remarks about DA-run municipalities outperforming ANC ones.

Ramaphosa recently said that some of the country’s best-run municipalities were under DA control, singling out Cape Town and Stellenbosch as examples.

He encouraged ANC councillors to learn from these municipalities

“I can name it here because there’s nothing wrong with competition. They are often DA-controlled municipalities.

“We need to ask ourselves, what is it that they are doing that is better than what we are doing?,” Ramaphosa said.

“And there’s nothing wrong with us saying we want to go and see what Cape Town is doing. We want to go and see what Stellenbosch is doing.”

He continued: “We cannot forever stay at the bottom.”

“It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities sometimes tend to move even backwards. And you are the people who can improve that. The audit outcomes are important.”

Speaking in the Western Cape, Mantashe said there is nothing wrong with comparing the two parties’ councils, stressing that clean audits and sound financial management are “inherent” to running municipalities.

“There is nothing wrong in comparing an ANC council with a DA council and audit outcomes are important because they are about financial management, which is an inherent part of running a municipality. They are doing well on that,” The Citizen quoted him as saying.

“Our responsibility is to pick up service delivery issues where they matter. It is the completeness of the service provided that is important.  It is no less important to run your finances properly as an ANC councillor,” he said.

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