---

·      President Cyril Ramaphosa urges municipalities to insource services ·      Ramaphosa warns about infighting among municipal leaders ·      It is a crime for municipalities to fail to spend budgets

---

Sizwe sama Yende

---

President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged ANC deployees in municipalities to pay attention to little things to keep investors and attract new ones.

Addressing ANC conference delegates in Mpumalanga on Saturday, Ramaphosa also warned municipalities against outsourcing services such as water and construction vehicles – the yellow fleet.

Ramaphosa said that lack of service delivery such as water, potholes and sewer spillage could be the little things that chase away investors. He said that infighting among mayors, speakers and municipal managers caused the party’s deployees to lose focus on delivering services.

Sometimes the consequences are crippling such as in the case of Ditsobotla Local Municipality in Lichtenburg where Clover closed its cheese factory and relocated it to Durban in KwaZulu-Natal in 2021.

The company cited water and electricity challenges. The factory employed 380 permanent employees and about 40 temporary employees. It also offered opportunities to small businesses.

“We had Ditsobotla. It being a municipality with two mayors, two speakers and two municipal managers…they focused on fighting each other to death and forgot service delivery. Clover decided to shut down and many people lost their jobs,” Ramaphosa said.

Ramaphosa said that municipalities should function well and use their equitable share of the budget from national Treasury.

The ANC is facing its sternest test in the 2026 local government elections following its disastrous performance in the general elections in 2024 where it received less than 50% of the vote and had to form a Government of National Unity.

Former president Jacob Zuma’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Party inflicted the biggest damage and secured the majority of votes in KZN.

The ANC is fighting against losing power in more municipalities than it did in 2021.

“In order for our economy to grow, we must focus on what are little things. When we see a pothole, we must ask ourselves what it means to investors. When there is sewer spillage we must dela with it the same way we would at our homes,” Ramaphosa said.

He said that municipalities were making a big mistake by outsourcing services such as water.

“Outsourcing takes away the capability of state, innovation and energy. Municipalities must own water tankers themselves. Similarly, municipalities must own the yellow equipment and fleet.”

Ramaphosa said that municipalities were committing crime when they did not spend budget and returned it to national Treasury. “The money is not spent because there’s no capacity and comrades fight on who should get tenders,” he said.