ANC doesn’t want councillors who work to line their pockets, says Ramaphosa

With 20 days left until South Africans vote in this year’s local government elections, President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday was back on the ANC’s campaign trail to woo voters in Kimberley, Northern Cape.

This was after Ramaphosa crisscrossed eThekwini in KwaZulu-Natal at the weekend to gather support for the governing party as it intensified its election campaign for the 1 November polls.

In Kimberley, Ramaphosa embarked on door-to-door campaigning to listen to residents’ concerns regarding service delivery, and a lack of water and electricity. He was joined by several ANC leaders in the Northern Cape, including Premier and ANC chair in the province, Zamani Saul.

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Addressing a community meeting in Greenpoint, in Sol Plaatje Local Municipality, Ramaphosa promised residents the ANC was on a path of renewal, and spoke out against councillors who are corrupt and engage in nepotism.

He acknowledge that the ANC had made mistakes in the past, but said its councillor candidates would work for the people if they are elected and not line their pockets.

“If you want to be a councillor, you have to go and work for the people. If you don’t want to do it, you must go to your house and stay there. Now is the time to work, now is the time to work for your people,” Ramaphosa said.

“We don’t want people who will only work for themselves and their pockets, who will also work for their friends [and] who will work for their friends and bring their relatives into the local council. We say no more. We want people who will work for the people of our local municipalities.”

Ramaphosa told local residents to vote for the ANC and reject the opposition parties.

“If they try to win you over you must say: ‘we vote for the ANC, Greenpoint belongs to the ANC and Greenpoint is going to vote for the ANC'”, he said.

“It is absolutely essential that we must go and vote in our numbers. If we don’t vote, this area of yours will go back to being controlled by the DA.”

The ANC president also took the opportunity to encourage locals to get their Covid-19 jabs, saying vaccines were the best defence against fighting against the pandemic.

He also said the ANC government had done the best it could to save lives and secure the livelihoods of South Africans since the coronavirus pandemic first hit our shores last year.

“We increased [social] grants [and] we even introduced the new grant, the R350 grant per month. Let’s give a round of applause to our government for having done something like that,” Ramaphosa said.

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