Ramaphosa asks residents to forgive Morero over foul remarks

President Cyril Ramaphosa has come to Joburg mayor Dada’s defence regarding the expletives he used to refer to a resident during a meeting, saying people make mistakes and he hopes residents will accept his apology.

On Thursday, Morero and other senior city officials were in Tshepisong on the west of Johannesburg to engage residents regarding electricity issues when he said “you are talking sh*t” to a resident who was heckling him and also calling him a criminal.

Ramaphosa, who went on a campaign trail in Orange Farm and Hammanskraal on Sunday, told journalists that while Morero made “utterance which we find completely unacceptable, he has apologised”.

“We as the ANC have taken him up on that and I do hope that our people also will be able to accept the apology that he has given.

“We are people, and we will always make mistakes. The important thing is whether we humble ourselves enough to be able to say, ‘we apologise, this does not represent who we are’ because what he said does not represent [the ANC] in any way,” Ramaphosa said.

Following engagements with Orange Farm residents, Ramaphosa raised concerns about the crime wave gripping the township in the south of Johannesburg.

“There is a real safety problem here [Orange Farm],” he said to the media. “In every house that we go to, they are raising the same issue. One of the issues I was trying to find out if there is a Community Policing Forum (CPF) working with the police. “It is not as active as we want it to be.”

Ramaphosa said where there is an active CPF, it is able to bring the levels of crime down.

He also touched on some of the basic service delivery issues plaguing the area such as unemployment as well as water problems.

“The water issue is being attended to on an urgent basis. As you will recall, I set up a water crisis committee; it has come up with a clear plan on what we need to do, and that plan is being actioned, but residents are grateful for service delivery.

“Door-to-door work is really good work, and I enjoy it meeting our people in their homes as they get to speak to the president as well.”

Ramaphosa also noted the decline in voting and said the ANC needs to increase confidence in people. He said the party needs to do a lot of work to increase that level of confidence and trust on their side as the ANC and their strategy was to increase service delivery.

“People who sense that service delivery is not really happening to improve their lives, will stay away from voting. So, that’s why we are focusing on ensuring that we get councillors who are going to focus on the needs of the people on the ground.

“But our own strategy must be to get people out to come and vote. We find that our people love the ANC. They love the ANC, and in this area, Orange Farm, this is ANC territory. So we want more and more of them to come out and vote for the ANC in order to strengthen the hand of the ANC with regard to governance.

“And we are now going to make sure that we choose councillors who have been identified by their community themselves, people that they trust and know, to become our councillors, people they know will serve them better. In Orange Farm, people love the ANC; it’s an ANC territory.”

The president’s next stop was Hammanskraal, where over 20 people died of a cholera outbreak in 2023 owing to ongoing water challenges. The area has been serviced by water tankers for many years as their tap water was deemed undrinkable and contaminated with E. Coli.

“In parts of Hammanskraal I have been to, we have installed boreholes, and they have been in use for three weeks, and people are getting water. So the water crisis is being addressed. Our ministers and officials are hard at work,” he said.