ANC STATEMENT ON THE PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUMMIT AND ELECTIONS PREPARATIONS

01 December 2010

The ANC joins government, all South Africans and the entire world on the 22nd commemoration of the World Aids Day. 

We are indeed proud that our government's commitment to reduce the HIV and AIDS pandemic infections has since the 1 April 2010 expanded the mother to child transmission prevention and antiretroviral (ARV) therapy for children as announced by President Jacob Zuma on 1 December 2009.

A massive HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) Campaign was launched at the end of April 2010, calling on each and every South African to demonstrate that they are responsible by taking an HIV test. The drive seeks to test 15 million South Africans by the end of June 2011. In this vein, we heartily welcome the voluntary counselling and testing of millions of South Africans ever since this campaign was started.

Let us all hold our hands together to support and influence people within our communities to reduce risky sexual behaviour to prevent the spread of HIV. We need to continue to test and influence others to test for HIV and TB as a routine way of ensuring healthy lifestyle choices, irrespective of status.
"Working together we can create an AIDS-free society"

PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUMMIT

The African National Congress will tomorrow, the 02 December 2010 at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, hold the Provincial and Local Government summit to review provincial and local government structures.  This event will be graced by the ANC deployed cadres in national, provincial and local spheres of government as well as cadres from the Alliance.

These cadres will spend three days looking at ways to better our provincial and local government structures, processes and efficiency.  This will be done in order to make sure that we improve government efficiency and service delivery challenges in these spheres of government.

The summit has been initiated as a result of observations of service delivery inefficiencies in levels of government, whether in the form of gaps, duplications or non-achievement of service delivery targets. It also comes as a directive from the recently held National General Council (NGC) of the ANC.

This summit will consider the following imperatives:

• Whether provinces and local government are not functioning in accordance with their original founding objectives, which are resulting in inefficiencies in service delivery, gaps, duplications or purely lack of service delivery;
• Suitability and advisability of one elections date for both national, provincial and local government elections;
• Advisability of having political office bearers in political organisations serving as administrative heads in municipalities;
• Role and relevance of provinces, a reflection on their successes and failures;
• Whether we should separate the executive and administrative powers at local government level and ensure proper oversight;
• What has been the success and failures of our municipalities since they were established in this democracy.

We are confident that we will come out of this summit with concrete proposals and recommendations that will make sure that we improve our provincial and local government sphere in order to respond to the challenges of the majority of our people.  We remain committed to ensuring government that is accountable to all its citizens.

ELECTIONS PREPARATIONS

The ANC is well ahead in the preparations for the local government elections next year.  Our elections machinery is well oiled and ready to roll anytime.  We have already established elections structures in all our provinces, regions, branches as well as at the national level.

We are almost at the verge of completing training of all our volunteers who will be responsible for mobilising our communities and conduct the door-to-door visits, work with the IEC in the various voting districts throughout the country.

The ANC and all its branches is already embarking in the ID Campaign, through our door-to-door campaign we are calling on those who have no identity documents to apply for them so that they can register as voters in the forth-coming elections.

In taking forward the resolution of our 52nd Conference held in Polokwane, we have already adopted a selection criterion that involves the full participation of the communities in selecting our candidates for the forth-coming elections.  The ANC will, for the first time, test its candidates with the communities, through Community meetings.  Also as part of the selection criteria, for the first time, there will be a screening committee in each area to screen each and every candidate.

The involvement of our communities will ensure that our communities not only vote for the ANC but also know and participate in the selection of candidates.  When we said we want accountable leaders in the ANC, who will represent the needs of the people, we were serious about that commitment.  In this selection process, the ANC will be looking for candidates with a good track record in their communities, candidates that have not shown any divisive tendencies in the ANC, the Alliance and their communities and candidates who conform to values and principles as enshrined in the ANC Constitution.

This process is in progress and will end in January so that there is allowance for appeals for those who like to appeal against any candidate.

The ANC has developed the Councillors Accountability and the Councillors Code of Conduct as promised in our 2006 Local Government manifesto.  We are steadfast in the implementation of such a code of conduct in order to ensure that our councillors are always accountable to be people they represent.

This process will therefore lead us towards the finalisation of our list process in compliance with the IEC regulations.

We are in the final consultation phase in the development of the ANC election Manifesto.  We will launch our elections manifesto next year in February. 

The leadership of the ANC is crisscrossing the length and breadth of our country listening and giving feedback on the ANC led government service delivery record as contained in our 2006 manifesto.  A lot has been done and more still needs to be done. Together with the people of this country, we can achieve more.

Statement issued by ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, December 1 2010

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