Port Elizabeth - What do you do if you constantly receive bad press? You stop complaining and start your own publication.
That’s what the ANC did in the Eastern Cape’s Nelson Mandela Bay.
The Vote ANC newspaper was started as a result of all the bad publicity the ruling party had been getting on its governance of the metro, among other things, ANC regional spokesman Gift Ngqondi said on Monday.
Ngqondi, the paper’s contributing writer, said that for its members, supporters and voters to understand the successes, it was resolved that the newspaper should reflect on the progress made in the past five years.
The paper, which is distributed free of charge, had been well received in the metro’s 60 wards, he said.
A total of 42 000 copies were printed for its first edition this month. Ngqondi said another 42 000 copies of the second edition would be delivered by the end of this week.
He said the ANC had not received positive coverage in the mainstream media.
The ANC-run metro was beset by many governance challenges and was drowning in a mountain of debt and corruption. This was attributed to political infighting within the regional executive committee.
The structure was disbanded by President Jacob Zuma in 2014 and replaced with a regional task team led by co-ordinator Beza Ntshona.
The ANC has also been fighting off concerted efforts by the DA to take over the Eastern Cape’s richest and biggest metro, incorporating Port Elizabeth, Despatch and Uitenhage. Mayor and ANC mayoral candidate Danny Jordaan was parachuted in last year to try to stabilise the municipality.
“We have been receiving bad press on issues of corruption and service delivery protests. We felt that with the achievements that we’ve had which were never recorded in the media space, let’s tell our people the good story in the municipality (about) what we have delivered,” Ngqondi said.
The achievements included housing delivery.
“The ANC has done a lot in the area of housing delivery. There is a new area in Chetty; there are more than 2 000 houses that we’ve just built in that area. There is no narrative that these are the positives of the ANC government in this metro.”
Ngqondi said the newspaper was also aimed at instilling a culture of reading among the metro’s 1.2 million residents.
“We want to inculcate the culture of reading among our people too. We want to continue this project, we feel we need to tell the good story about this municipality; people have always been fed negative stories about this municipality. In their minds, there has never been any service delivery in the metro.”
@luyolomkentane
Elections Bureau