ORANGE FARM, GAUTENG — ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa faced intense demands for improved basic services in Orange Farm this weekend, as the water crisis and crumbling infrastructure dominated his campaign trail in southern Johannesburg.
The sprawling community, home to more than half a million people, is currently grappling with severe service delivery failures. Locals describe a daily struggle defined by rapidly deteriorating roads, raw sewage spilling into neighborhoods, and a dire lack of employment opportunities for the youth.
The situation is particularly dire in the neighboring area of Drieziek, where residents report going months without running tap water, forcing them to rely entirely on municipal water tankers as their sole lifeline. Addressing the frustrated crowds, Ramaphosa assured the community that resolving the severe water shortage remains a top national priority for his administration.
However, the political fallout from these infrastructure deficits quickly followed the President to his next campaign stop in Hammanskraal, located north of Pretoria.
In Hammanskraal, the Democratic Alliance (DA) capitalized on the ANC’s vulnerabilities, deploying billboards to ensure the ruling party’s water management failures remained highly visible to voters.
This aggressive campaign tactic prompted a fierce rebuttal from ANC spokesperson Panyaza Lesufi, who shifted the blame back onto the opposition’s historical municipal record. Lesufi argued that the DA was in no position to criticize the ANC, citing the opposition’s past governance in key municipalities.
He pointed out that the DA was running the Ekurhuleni municipality during past water crises and fatalities, and governed Tshwane when the Hammanskraal community tragically lost lives to a cholera outbreak. Lesufi emphasized that the ANC did not “stoop low” to erect political billboards to exploit those tragedies. He further noted that the DA also failed to address these exact service delivery matters while in control of the City of Johannesburg.
