There are few municipalities in the Eastern Cape that anyone could claim to be well run.
On the contrary, this province boasts some of the most delinquent municipalities in the entire country.
The auditor-general has run out of words to describe the negligence, non-responsiveness and disarray of Eastern Cape municipalities.
The delivery of services at provincial level is similarly poor.
The health and education departments, which jointly soaked up 76% of the province’s R105bn budget for the current financial year, have terrible performance records.
Children still attend classes in overcrowded and dangerously dilapidated schools run by overstretched, demoralised teachers.
The department routinely ignores court judgments ordering it to bring schools up to code, to staff them properly and to provide proper furniture and other support materials necessary for pupils to be able to learn.
Similarly, most hospitals have a huge number of vacancies for doctors and nurses and shortages of vital medication and even oxygen.
Like schools, health infrastructure is visibly decaying from the inside out, with broken windows, boarded doors and uncollected medical waste piling up outside.
All too often, patients are left lying on dirty floors without the necessary medication or care.
The sub-standard care leads to more medical negligence claims, resulting in huge payouts and even less budget for actual healthcare.
While administrative performance is lacklustre in ANC governance, the party is able to pour its funds and abundant excess energy into fights and litigation around elective conferences, future leadership and, of course, the apparently urgent issue of name changes.
Those that the ANC seeks to honour by naming towns or cities after them, if still alive, would feel anything but flattered.
No-one would want their name attached to a filthy, decaying town, city or municipality.
The great Xhosa prophet-warrior, Makana — also known as Makhanda — suffered the double whammy of having his name attached to both the municipality and to the little city which has the misfortune to fall under it.
Having just clocked up its seventh disclaimer, this serial offender, Makana municipality, is now reportedly among the worst-run 2.7% of municipalities countrywide.
That is the bottom of a very deep barrel. The auditor-general said last year the municipality was causing its citizens “active harm”.
And yet the ANC persists in waging legal war over who should be running the party or the province and what names to give the towns broken by its neglect.
It is the very definition of the old adage “fiddling while Rome burns”.
If the Eastern Cape ANC ever sorts out its electoral and leadership issues, it is to be hoped that its leaders will focus on real issues affecting the residents of this province.
Renaming places after heroes should only happen once those places become worthy of bearing them.
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