President Cyril Ramaphosa, engages with the media on the sidelines of the party’s national executive committee meeting. Picture: @MYANC/Twitter
Closing the gaps between local and national government and services to the people of South Africa were issues at the forefront of the ANC’s National Executive Committee meeting that took place this weekend in Benoni, Johannesburg.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who engaged with some of the media on the sidelines of the meeting, said the NEC reflected greatly on the challenges affecting South Africans especially in regard to the provision of basic services.
According to Ramaphosa, one of the issues raised was the failures and weaknesses in local government and the urgent need for national government to support the local governments.
Ramaphosa also used the meeting to reflect on the water crisis the recently affect Hammanskraal, where at least 23 people died and about 229 people were hospitalised following a cholera outbreak.
He said that “very little” was done to fix and restore the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Plant and in such instances, national government needs to utilise pieces of legislation to improve the living conditions for people when local government did not have capacity.
“We cannot let people live in squalor and we cannot leave everything to local government. We need to find ways of intervening directly,” he said.
The party’s leader emphasised that no government department at national, provincial or local level, should be working on its own and in silos.
He commended the current NEC for showing a “united” and highly spirited attitude during the meeting adding, this had been one of the better meetings of the NEC “which contained a lot of meat and substance” showing it was on the way to be a more united organisation.
Ramaphosa further highlighted a number of topics affecting South Africa, including load shedding, the economy, the upcoming BRICS summit and the meeting with Russia and Ukraine leaders.
He said with the continuing rise of the cost of living, they were looking at how to boost investments and how the reforms introduced by government were being implemented so far.
"We are on the way to be a united organisation as the divisions are melting away. We are dealing openly with challenges of the past. There will be a forward movement to a united and renewed ANC,“ he said.
kailene.pillay@inl.co.za
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