LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: Fuel relief, Agoa warning and voter anger dominate President’s election briefing

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> In a wide-ranging briefing with editors and journalists on Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa acknowledged voter anger, hinted at fuel price relief and warned that South Africa could lose its Agoa trade benefits.

With the 4 November local government elections just over two weeks away, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has revealed how he warned Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero that he could lose his job ahead of the November 2025 G20 summit .

Speaking with editors and journalists in Johannesburg on Monday, 19 October at a Black Wednesday event – marking the 1977 apartheid government crackdown on black resistance publications, organisations and people – he acknowledged voter anger, hinted at fuel price relief and warned that South Africa could lose its African Growth and Opportunity Act ( Agoa ) trade benefits with the US. But when confronted with South Africa’s economic and municipal failures, he repeatedly returned to his national reform programme.

He acknowledged deep public dissatisfaction with collapsing municipal services ahead of the 4 November elections, but insisted that national reforms would eventually produce economic growth and better lives.

The President revealed that he had warned Johannesburg Mayor Dada Morero to clean up the city ahead of the G20 Leaders’ Summit, held in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 November 2025, or risk losing his job.

“As we were going to the G20, I drove around the streets, and I called the mayor,” he recalled. “Do you expect them to come to a Joburg as filthy as this? If you value your job, start cleaning up,” he admonished the mayor. Morero immediately stepped up the clean-up campaign in the city, according to Ramaphosa.

Morero led a six-week inner-city clean-up operation in February 2025, followed by a campaign to rehabilitate illegal dumping sites in June. The preparations intensified ahead of the November gathering of world leaders.

The account offered an unusually direct glimpse into how the ANC president put pressure on the mayor of South Africa’s largest city, where deteriorating infrastructure and service delivery have become major election issues.

It was a political ultimatum rather than a formal threat of dismissal. Ramaphosa said he had recently delivered a similar warning in Mangaung after encountering filthy streets there. He demanded action and promised to return within a week. Cleaning equipment appeared the following day.

He gave a third example of his personal interventions to get officials to act, recalling: “I landed at an air force base some time ago and I said, ‘These weeds must be gone when I come back.’” When he returned, the weeds had been removed.

The three anecdotes illustrated how the President had resorted to personally demanding action on basic maintenance and cleanliness, even as his party struggled to convince voters that its local governments could deliver.

He said the ANC was encountering widespread unhappiness on the campaign trail.

“Many South Africans are deeply frustrated by the state of local government,” he said, citing electricity disruptions, deteriorating roads and water failures.