World News | S African Prez Ramaphosa Asks Political Parties to Work Together for Citizens By Fakir Hassen

Johannesburg, Nov 4 (PTI) South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday made an impassioned plea to the political parties and urged them to put aside their differences and work together in a spirit of partnership and common purpose.

Ramaphosa spoke on Thursday evening as the Independent Electoral Commission shared the final results of the Local Government Elections held across South Africa on Monday.

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A record 325 political parties and over 95,000 candidates, 1,500 of them independents, vied for the seats in 213 municipalities.

The final results showed that there are an unprecedented 66 “hung” municipalities where no political party gained the required outright majority.

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In the lowest poll turnout since the first democratic elections since Nelson Mandela was elected president in 1994, only 12.2 million of the 26.2 million registered voters cast their ballots.

The ANC with its lower majority still remained the dominant party in a number of municipalities, with talks around coalition governance expected to start with numerous smaller parties, who are now kingmakers despite their lower number of seats in municipalities.

Ramaphosa's call came as some parties were reported to be engaged in coalition talks already, with his own ruling African National Congress (ANC) having suffered an overall drop in voter support, including losing control of the vital seaport of Ethekwini (Durban) for the first time.

The ANC on Wednesday acknowledged that citizens were dissatisfied with the party's performance.

“The low voter turnout, especially in traditional ANC strongholds, communicates a clear message: The people are disappointed in the ANC with the slow progress in fixing local government, in ensuring quality and consistent basic services, in tackling corruption and greed,” the ANC said in a statement.

Analysts said the massive stayaway in the elections, especially in traditional ANC strongholds such as Soweto, was the voters' way of showing that they were unhappy with the poor service delivery and corruption at municipalities for the past decade.

Frequent electricity loadshedding, lack of water and poor roads, even in major cities, have been blamed on a lack of interventions by the ANC.

Commenting on the message sent out by voters, Ramaphosa said those in whom the people have placed their trust – the elected councillors - now needed to get down to work.

“At the end of the day, we all want the same thing: to better the lives of the South African people. We need to strengthen the trust between citizens and elected representatives through competence, integrity, performance and delivery,” Ramaphosa said.

“Public representatives need to be more visible and active in our communities. They need to focus on implementation and make the people partners in development. Above all, they need to listen to the communities they serve,” the president added.

“The people of South Africa want their lives improved. They want better services. They want their representatives to be responsive and also to be accountable. They want to live in a better South Africa with equal opportunity, where their rights are realised and where they are treated with dignity and respect,” Ramaphosa said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)