The spokesperson of the ANC Interim Provincial Committee (IPC), Oupa Khoabane, tells OFM News that this has caught their attention and that they have to do an introspection as a party and start to deliver for the people. The ANC managed to secure 51,5% of the votes in Mangaung in the Free State in this year’s local government elections. They are trailed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who obtained 25,48% and 11,37% of the votes respectively. Khoabane has pledged that the party will double its efforts to ensure that service delivery efforts are effectively implemented.

“As part of the process of organisational renewal, we respond to deal with all the challenges that people are raising. So that, as we go to the electorate in future, we go from a different level to deal with different challenges. It’s not a question of responding to voters, it’s a question of responding to that message that the electorate is giving us. Simply, the people have deep trust in the ANC, they have confidence in the ANC - such that they’re expressing their dissatisfaction in the manner that the ANC is doing things. They withheld their votes,” says Khoabane/Mokgoabane.

He further adds that residents of the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality continue to remain loyal despite the setbacks faced by the municipality. “We have to work on these issues that people are raising so that we can see more people be motivated to go to the polls and vote for the ANC.”

Khoabane concludes by reiterating the importance of the political party conducting introspection into why the outcome of the victory was as narrow as the results indicate.

OFM News/Kekeletso Mosebetsi and Lee Simmons