Jeff Radebe: Fix local government or lose 2026 elections

ANC KZN convenor Jeff Radebe says 2026 local elections are a referendum on municipal performance. Voters will judge service delivery, councillor visibility, and infrastructure improvement, not ideology or rhetoric. TheAfrican National Congress(ANC) in KwaZulu-Natal has warned that the2026 local government electionswill be decided not by ideology, but by visible performance at municipal level.

ANC KZNProvincial Convenor Jeff Radebetold delegates at the party’s provincial Lekgotla in Durban on Sunday that the polls will be a “referendum on our renewal”. Radebe said while the national sphere shapes policy and the provincial sphere coordinates strategy, it is local government that “defines the lived experience of democracy”. He added that it is at municipal level where citizens judge whether freedom has translated into dignity.

“It is here that taps run or remain dry, that refuse is collected or left to decay, that streetlights function or darkness prevails. It is here, in the everyday interaction between citizen and state, that legitimacy is either reinforced or eroded,” he said. Radebe said the 2021 local government polls and the2024 provincial and national electionswere “not simply influenced by national narratives; they reflected frustration at municipal dysfunction”.

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He said communities punished the ANC where service delivery faltered and support was withheld “where councillors were absent, where infrastructure projects stalled, where corruption scandals surfaced, and where communication collapsed”. He emphasised that the electorate had not abandoned the values of the National Democratic Revolution, but had expressed dissatisfaction with execution. “If we misdiagnose that message, we will repeat the error.

If we confront it honestly, we can reverse the trend,” Radebe said. Radebe framed local government as the “frontline of transformation”, saying it is where spatial apartheid must be dismantled, township economies nurtured, and informal traders supported rather than harassed. He added that municipalities are the delivery instruments of the Constitution’s mandate to progressively realise socio-economic rights.

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