EDITORIAL | Promises and policies, sure, but what about proper implementation?

The ANC launched its manifesto for the November 4 local government elections in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, last weekend.

As with any other party manifesto, it was peppered with many promises on how to improve service delivery, improve local economies and create jobs.

Among these, and in a clear attempt to attract support from the poor, the ANC wants all beneficiaries of social grants to be automatically registered as indigents to receive free basic services such as water, electricity and exemption from municipal rates.

They fill forms on an annual basis, and these often get lost in the system due to incompetence or inefficiency, thereby depriving them of the much-needed relief.

The ANC is also proposing to deal a severe blow to tenderpreneurs by stopping tenders on cleaning, security and refuse collection services. It says it wants people to be directly employed by municipalities to perform these functions, or what they call insourcing.

The party, in its blue print titled “Masakhe: Let us build”, also plans to clean the chaotic billing system plaguing many of the municipalities it currently runs, such as the City of Johannesburg.

All of these promises, and many contained in their municipal blueprint, are laudable ideas that can change people’s lives if properly implemented.

And that is the crux of the issue. Since it was first elected into government in 1994, the ANC has come up with lofty ideas on how to take South Africa forward.

It boggles the mind that there are still ANC leaders who are hellbent on undermining the very policies and rules they had agreed to.

But proper implementation of such plans and policies has been somewhat disappointing. So some South Africans should not be blamed when they say to the ANC that “we have heard that before.”

This is because the gap between rhetoric and execution has been the defining feature of the ANC’s governance problem.

Corruption is also the ANC’s Achilles heel, coupled with cadre deployment, where jobs often go to the politically connected at the expense of competence and to the detriment of service delivery.

So if the ANC is serious about effectively bringing the grand plans it presented this past weekend, it will have to stop the incompetent from running municipalities.

It is for this reason that it was concerning when it emerged on Monday that the party’s electoral commission, led by former president Kgalema Motlanthe, has been requested by ANC provincial and regional leaders to waive a requirement that councillor candidates should at least have a matric to qualify as candidates .