Services must be delivered in partnership with people
APC CONFIDENT OF GROWTH
THE African People's Convention (APC ) is approaching the 2016 local government elections with hope and confidence that our footprints in the political landscape of South Africa will be greatly enhanced like never before.
We planned timeously and our cadres stuck to the script of our campaigns .
Using the principle of the mass line, we have correctly diagnosed the fundamental issues affecting African people in general and the working class in particular, especially the rural poor.
The APC is contesting a third of all the municipalities in this country. And, having crisscrossed the country, I am satisfied that beyond August 3 the flag of the APC will be hoisted even higher, our voice louder and our bite stronger.
I am making a call to our people to go out and vote for the APC, as it represents a fundamentally different way of doing things.
The party’s election commitments should be premised on and are a reflection of its ideological foundation.
The APC is a revolutionary Africanist party that has articulated its election platform in line with its political outlook.
The APC represents a historical ideological current of Africanism, taking the baton from the likes of Anton Lembede, Robert Sobukwe and Peter Raboroko.
Thus, our commitment to the people is genuine and has a historical and an ideological basis.
For the 2016 elections, the APC has premised its platform on good governance and service delivery.
The APC has the maturity and temperament to take charge of state affairs.
We seek in the first instance to strengthen the weak administrative machinery of municipalities which is the basis of all that is wrong with local government, employ the right people for the job at hand, fill vacant posts, abolish redundant posts, dismantle the unholy threesome of councillors, officials and service providers who are united to embezzle public funds, be tough on maladministration, corruption and waste of public funds.
The current reports of the auditor-general do not make for good reading.
With proper administration we should then be able to provide timeous and quality services to our people. However, the APC believes that services must be delivered in partnership with the people. This will happen by an adherence to the Municipal Systems Act (which requires councillors to meet communities once per month) and the IDP (integrated development plan) processes (which requires communities to determine their service priorities).
In the delivery of services the APC will introduce social audits.
This means that after a project has been completed, communities must meet council officials to reflect on their experience of the rendered services and hold council to account for its work.
This revolutionary approach will ensure that communities are not mere passive recipients of municipal services but are active in identifying good practices to be sustained, and shortcomings that need to be corrected.
The welfare and happiness of the people is our only priority. Thus the APC will seek to ensure that our people enjoy the services that public resources enable us to deliver.
The APC will ensure that there is reliable water supply to all our people. We will eliminate the incompetence and slave mentality that see African communities going for weeks or months without water, while whites in the suburbs water their flowers daily.
The APC will ensure that no settlement exists for more than two years without electricity.
The APC will also ensure that we assist early childhood development (ECD) centres, assist with proper infrastructure, ensure that all existing crèches are registered and have feeding schemes.
We will also ensure that ECD teachers are employed as permanent staff by the Department of Basic Education so they can get all the benefits in line with their critical nation-building work.
The APC will also actively seek to ensure that our people live in a clean environment, that refuse is removed timeously, the surroundings are cleaned, and our people are educated so that even if they are poor they must be noble enough to live cleanly.
The APC resolved at its national elections summit in October last year that the majority of its deployees to council must be women.
The APC had only 29 councillors in seven provinces in this term ending. We are excited that the
“The welfare and happiness of the people is our only priority
results of August 3 will be a shock to some people who make lazy assumptions about the APC without fully appreciating the principles and strategy behind every step or position that we take.
We believe that we have been correct in our analysis of the object and subjective conditions and the programmes we have put in place will lead to brilliant victories now and into the future.
The 2016 local government elections will set the APC on a positive trajectory, signalling that the ghost of Sobukwe is rising. These will be the pebbles before the landslide.