Ramaphosa says it's painful to admit that some of SA's best-run municipalities governed by DA

African National Congress (ANC) president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said the party must take stock of its shortfalls, highlighting that it was "painful" to admit that some of the country’s best-run municipalities were governed by the Democratic Alliance (DA).

Ramaphosa spoke at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, where he addressed over 40,000 party councillors from across the country.

While the ANC controls a majority of municipalities in the country, it also governs some of the worst-performing ones, including Maluti-a-Phofung and Ditsobotla.

Ramaphosa said that improving audit outcomes and the municipality’s finances had to be a priority for every ANC councillor.

"Comrades, it cannot and must not be acceptable that in our country we have, we control a number of municipalities. It is usually painful each time when the auditor-general comes to report to Cabinet and they put up their report and those municipalities that do best are not ANC-controlled municipalities and I can name it here because there is nothing wrong with competition, they are often DA-controlled municipalities."

Ramaphosa said the ANC must ask itself what the DA was doing better.

"And there is 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, how do they craft everything. We need to be moving up the ladder or being good at what we do, we cannot forever stay at the bottom. It hurts me deeply when I continue to see that our municipalities tend to move even backwards and you are the people who can improve that."

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