The ANC has spent months trying to raise the bar for the people it wants to send into South Africa’s municipalities.
The party introduced stricter candidate-selection rules ahead of the 4 November local government elections, including a matric requirement for ordinary councillor candidates. Candidates without matric were recently told they would need to commit to obtaining a matric certificate or an accredited NQF Level 4 qualification within 12 months of becoming councillors.
The interesting question is whether matric is actually a good measure of who can govern.
The ANC says its new rules are part of an effort to field the best possible candidates and improve the capacity of councillors to provide strategic direction and oversight to municipalities. Its rules also recognise experience, education and expertise, with provision for exceptional waivers.
Municipal government involves budgets, legislation, procurement, infrastructure and services that can affect hundreds of thousands of people. But a qualification and the ability to govern are not quite the same thing.
The people who don’t have matric
According to the South African Local Government Association, about 26% to 27% of councillors nationally do not have matric. That means this is not a tiny group of people who somehow slipped through the political back door.
Fume Phani, a former ANC councillor in Petrus Steyn in the Free State, is one of them. Phani left school after her father died. Her mother, a domestic worker, was supporting four children, and Phani says she had to find work to help keep the family going.
She worked as a cleaner and security guard before starting a small tuck shop. For her, not having matric does not mean she stopped learning. “I know what it means to go to bed hungry,” she says. “I know what it means to look for a job and be told you don’t have the right papers.”
She says those experiences helped her understand the residents she represented. “Those experiences are my qualification,” Phani says. She was sometimes spoken down to in council meetings and overlooked for committees because she lacked formal qualifications. She argues that a certificate cannot measure everything someone brings to public office.
Then what should count?
Prof Sibusiso Moyo, deputy vice-chancellor for Research, Innovation and Internationalisation at Stellenbosch University, says formal qualifications do matter. They provide evidence that someone has acquired specific knowledge and skills against a recognised standard, she says.
But qualifications cannot fully capture practical experience, leadership, resilience, wisdom or community-based knowledge. Ideally, she says, institutions should recognise both formal qualifications and demonstrated competence.
“Just go back to school” sounds easier than it is
Mosinkie Cecilia left school in Grade 10 because her family could no longer afford the fees. Years later, after getting married and having children, she decided to return to education. She wanted to finish what she started and set an example for her children.
“When you’re young, you don’t think much about asking a question,” she says. “But as an adult, you feel stupid.” Cecilia studies before work and uses her lunch breaks when she can. She still has children, household responsibilities and a job to manage.
Moyo says this is precisely the problem with treating adult education as a simple box to tick. Adult learners can face financial pressure, work and caregiving responsibilities, transport problems and a lack of confidence after years away from formal education.
The ANC’s bigger test
There is a reasonable argument that councillors should understand the documents, budgets and laws that govern municipalities. But the ANC’s own rules acknowledge that experience and expertise matter too.
South Africa does not need councillors who merely meet a qualification requirement. It needs councillors who can understand budgets, challenge officials, listen to residents, make sound decisions and take responsibility when things go wrong.
The ANC’s candidate-selection process is already raising questions about organisation and competence. Its own electoral committee reportedly warned the party more than a year ago that it needed to start selecting candidates earlier, advice that was not followed. The result has been a messy submission process, with the ANC now fighting the IEC over candidates who were not submitted by the formal deadline. If the party wants to convince voters it has changed, the real test can’t be whether its candidates have the right certificates. Matric can tell you that someone passed Grade 12, but it does not tell you whether they will pass the much harder test of governing well.
Mbuyiswa is a Community Journalist for Explain News. He has a background in general and electrical work, during which he gained experience engaging with different communities. His passion for writing, sports, and storytelling inspired him to pursue his new career path in community journalism.
