Johannesburg – The ANC is facing an uphill battle and has its work cut out if it wants to retain the key Buffalo City Metro (BCM) in the upcoming elections, with the party’s internal divisions having bred a rebellion that threatens to unseat it.
At least 31 ANC members in this metro are heading to these polls as independent candidates due to the fallout in the party over the candidate lists.
At ward 20 in Mdantsane, about four ANC members are contesting the ward as independent candidates against the party candidate and those from opposition parties.
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Policy analyst Nkosikhulule Nyembezi said BCM has never lived up to its status as the metro despite its R8-billion budget in the current financial year.
“Although Buffalo City was granted the status of metro, its standard of services has never improved to be that of the metro. [Its eradication of informal settlements programme] has not done well in Buffalo City compared to other metropolitan councils.
It has not improved in a way that is competitive, whether in traffic police or effective implementation of bylaws,” Nyembezi said.
Buffalo City was declared the second Eastern Cape metropolitan municipality aft er the 2011 local government elections.
Before then, it was just another local municipality under the district of Amathole.
The metro is made up of three towns – East London, Qonce and Bhisho and is also home to the largest townships of Mdantsane and Zwelitsha.
It is the metro that houses the Eastern Cape provincial legislature and provincial departments.
Sunday World last month reported that former deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe in a hard-hitting report presented to the party’s special national executive committee (NEC) meeting, said the governing party’s selection of candidates for the local government elections was characterised by factional battles between those aligned to President Cyril Ramaphosa and the so-called RET Forces (radical economic transformation forces).
The ANC in the 2016 local government elections lost control of the province’s other metro, Nelson Mandela Bay, to a coalition led by the DA. During the previous local government elections, the ANC won 45 out 50 BCM wards, with the DA winning only five.
But on the PR seats, the DA got the lion’s share of 19 seats, followed by ANC with 15 seats, EFF gained seven, AIC received four seats, PAC, Cope, ACDP and UDM got a seat each.
BCM residents have often complained about its failure to fill potholes on its roads and have been complaining about poor billing system, high cost of electricity and its rates have pushed a number of informal housing developments in peri-urban areas.
ATM Youth leader Catherine Moji said the decision to turn BCM into a metro has only served the politicians but not the citizens.
“We are charged high rates of exorbitant amounts in electricity and water because we have to maintain the status of being a metro.
We are not benefiting anything from being a metro except for officials and governing party,” said Moji.
During its manifesto launch during the week, the DA was realistic in its assessment that the party will not achieve the outright win but it is hoping to lead a coalition government in BCM.
DA constituency leader Chantel King said: “We are in talks with all the parties that are contesting in BCM, except the ANC and EFF.”
Political analyst Ongama Mtimka believes this is the last election where the ANC will scrape through a win. “The ANC is on an overall decline. The changes that it is doing at the national level only serve to slow down the rates on which it is losing the support, but that is not going to reverse the trend of the overall decline,” Mtimka said.
“Nelson Mandela Bay’s decline was a gradual process, which saw the party support reaching 51% in 2009, declined to 50-plus during 2011 local government elections to a huge of almost 10% decline in 2016.
Buffalo City has been following the same trend, but it may not drop significantly like it did in Nelson Mandela Bay,” he said.
EFF leader Julius Malema was upbeat this week that his party will emerge victorious in BCM and Mthatha.
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