The delivery of services will be a top priority for South African voters in today's local elections, writes BILL CORCORANin Cape Town
DESPITE WIDESPREAD dissatisfaction with the performance of African National Congress (ANC) led municipalities in South Africa, the electorate appears reluctant to vote against the former liberation movement in today’s local elections.
Surveys show the public is extremely disappointed with the standard of service delivery they have received in their communities since the last local elections took place in 2006 when the ANC took 66.35 per cent of the vote.
Along with tackling crime and unemployment, improving service delivery has become one of the biggest challenges facing post-apartheid South Africa today, and a central issue for voters.
One survey of 2,375 predominately rural South African adults from 21 municipalities in ANC strongholds revealed only one in 10 was happy with service delivery in their areas.
The unhappiness reflected in these surveys is also evident on the ground, with frustrated township and rural dwellers from one end of the country to the other regularly unleashing violent service delivery protests over the past five years.
Disillusioned grassroots members of the ANC have also launched legal actions against their leaders in some municipalities, because of the questionable calibre of people put forward to run as ANC local election candidates.
In addition, ratepayer groups in Sannieshof in the North West Province, and Ngwathe and Mafube in the Free State, have taken over control of basic services, such as disposal of sewage and waste removal.
About 30 other ratepayers’ associations have also refused to pay over €1 million in rates and taxes, and 20 municipalities have gone bankrupt and been put into administration.
Since South Africa’s political parties first hit the campaign trails in early March, all of the opposition parties have been using the ANC’s poor performance at local level as a stick to beat the ruling party, and none more so than the main opposition Democratic Alliance.
Led by the competent and energetic Helen Zille, the Democratic Alliance has decided the time is ripe to try and shake off its image as a whites-only party and expand its support base in a number of the townships and cities the ANC has always believed untouchable.
Wherever Zille and her party candidates go on their campaign trail the message is the same: if you want improved service delivery, then vote for the Democratic Alliance, which has a proven track record of providing basic amenities in Cape Town and the few other municipalities it controls.
To make matters worse for the ruling party, Zille’s claims are backed up by government assessments. According to the Universal Household Access to Basic Services report – compiled by the department of co-operative governance – the Democratic Alliance is more capable than most at local level.
After reviewing service delivery in South Africa’s nine provinces between 2001 and 2007, Cape Town turned out to be the best-performing metro in the country when it came to delivering water, refuse removal, electricity provision and sanitation: the four basic service delivery areas.
In addition, six Democratic Alliance-run municipalities around the country have won awards for good governance from departments run by the ANC, the opposition party says.
For its part the ANC is urging voters to keep the faith with the former liberation movement, saying it is the only party that has consistently prioritised the poor since the end of apartheid 17 years ago, and that it had delivered much in that time.
Its mantra is: vote for the ANC and the party will sort out the management problems in its poorly preforming municipalities afterwards.
Senior ANC members have repeatedly said they do not believe voters will turn their backs on the movement that led the fight against apartheid.
Last week ANC president Jacob Zuma remarked that the Democratic Alliance were “daydreamers” for thinking they could claim key metros such as Johannesburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth.
But the ANC’s tendency during campaign rallies to revert to race-based politics to undermine the Democratic Alliance, whose origins are linked to the old Nationalist Party, the architects of apartheid, hints at a party less confident than it claims to be.
If significant gains are made by the Democratic Alliance it would be a serious warning to the ruling party that its dominance over the electorate is slipping, and would also undermine any intentions Zuma has to seek a second term in office as ANC leader, and ultimately South Africa’s president.
Political researcher at the Institute for Democracy in Africa, Justin Sylvester, said the 2009 general election results showed the ANC was in a phase of electoral decline, compared to the Democratic Alliance and recently formed the ANC breakaway, Congress of the People (Cope), in terms of the number of votes received.
However, he cautioned that voter turnout in local elections has been very low historically – the turn out in 2006 was 48.4 per cent – so it would be very difficult to predict how the election will go for the different parties.
“This election is probably more important for the Democratic Alliance than any other party as the challenge for them is to secure the disillusioned voters’ support,” he said.