We must strengthen our work and be responsive to the needs of the people

Local government is the most important sphere of government. It is where direct and dynamic contact with communities happens. It is an area where the African National Congress can and should dramatically improve its performance.

We need to analyse our weaknesses correctly and come up with concrete proposals for improvement. It is easy to criticize councillors as not performing, as weak, as lacking commitment and make many negative statements, and in the process offend many good councillors that the ANC has developed in about fifteen years.

The wave of service delivery-related protests we experienced recently raises new questions about our need to pay closer attention to this important sphere of government. We must be able to give the correct diagnosis of every protest action we see. Where service delivery is the real issue, we must be responsive and address the problems raised by the communities with the necessary speed. We must resist the temptation to be dismissive of problems and concerns of communities. Every problem must be treated with the necessary seriousness.

We must confront situations where the crisis is a function of infighting and positioning by some of our members to take over as councillors immediately or in local government elections in 2011. In such situations we must defend those who become victims of ambition. We must defend our policies and the image of our movement at all cost. We must deal with individual comrades who assume a bigger importance than the organisation itself.

The biggest threat to our movement is the intersection between the business interests and holding of public office. It is frightening to observe the speed with which the election to a position is seen to be the creation of an opportunity for wealth accumulation. Deployment to positions in local government should not be based on who can best facilitate opportunity for wealth accumulation for those in position of power.

If we do not deal decisively with this tendency the ANC will only move one way, that is, downward. Fighting corruption must be our preoccupation. The scale of corruption at local level is not at the same level as at both provincial and national level. The problem is that it is cruder. ANC councillors must be part of the network to fight corruption in all its forms and manifestations.

The lack of depth and experience make us less effective. Sixty seven percent of councillors are first term councillors, twenty eight percent are in their second term and only five percent are in the third term or more. As the ANC we have not consciously sought to retain experience. We have allowed clean sweeping of our public representatives in every round of elections. We have also treated local government as the stopover in a movement to either provincial or national government.

In 2011 we must retain some visible depth of skills and experience. To do this in a more scientific way we must do the performance assessment of councillors and complete it before December. We should do the follow up assessment around June 2010. Those comrades who are not performing must be given such feedback now and help them improve. Our assessment will cover three broad areas - council work, political work and personal development.

• Council work will cover areas such as attendance of council meetings, ANC caucus; work in committees and the quality of contribution in all these council structures.
• Political work will deal with one's involvement in the ANC's political work, that is, work in the constituency, including report back meetings and public meetings.
• Self-development is important for the ANC so as to develop the depth of experience and skills and make deployment to critical and strategic positions easier.

The branches of the ANC are important in that they must do the political oversight. This requires that we conduct more training and political education. Our branches must be made aware that the political leadership responsibility is not an opportunity to take over as a councillor. Branches must play a bigger role in the calling of public meetings, in that only those branches that call these meetings will be able to detect brewing trouble and live up to the tradition of the ANC being rooted among the people.

The ANC is not leading itself, but must lead society. We can, therefore, not limit our activism to our own structural meetings. Public meetings are a must for all our councillors.

ANC-controlled municipalities should never be outperformed by those controlled by the opposition. The responsibility of an ANC survival and/or collapse in local government rests on the shoulders of each councillor. We should be loyal to our decisions and take responsibility for both successes and failures.

All councillors must call public meetings immediately and continue doing so regularly to give feedback on what they are doing or planning to do. Equally important will be taking up the problems and concerns raised by communities and alert the province timely on potential problems including protests in our communities.

In preparation for 2011 we must do the performance assessment of councillors and give feedback. This should inform the selection of candidates for the 2011 local government elections.

To ensure continuity and improvement of our performance, we must strive for the retention of experience and expertise for continuity and improvement of our performance. Councillors and our branches must be part of the presidential crack team in fighting crime and corruption.

Working together we can and must do more to improve service delivery and performance of our councillors.

Gwede Mantashe is the Secretary General of the ANC. This article first appeared in ANC Today, the weekly online newsletter of the African National Congress, August 27 2009

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