Soweto's Ward 11 has cut Ramaphosa's party down twice. On November 4 it votes again

Ward 11 in Soweto, the Johannesburg ward that contains Hitekani Primary School where President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeatedly cast his ballot, goes to the polls on November 4 with the ANC defending a seat it has held while its support there has fallen sharply.

The party took 2 724 ward votes in 2021, down from 3 998 in 2016. The Patriotic Alliance drew 1 072 votes and the DA 606. Of the ward’s 15 888 registered voters, 7 163 cast a ballot, a turnout of 45.08%. The ANC’s Masha Mulelu won the seat in 2021.

Sunday World reported on 30 October that the Presidency has not publicly confirmed Ramaphosa’s voting arrangements for November 4. Hitekani sits at 4131 Masungwini Street, a short distance from the president’s childhood home.

The school carries the record of his standing in the neighbourhood in its own numbers. In the May 2019 national elections the ANC took more than 75% of the valid national and provincial votes cast at Hitekani, with turnout above 70% of the station’s 1 973 registered voters. Supporters crowded around him that day.

By the municipal elections of 1 November 2021 the approach was different. Residents had blocked roads with rocks and debris, demanding electricity and water, and some booed as Ramaphosa arrived with his wife, Tshepo Motsepe. The complaints followed him to the school gates. Ramaphosa said residents had legitimate reasons to complain about municipal services and that the ANC would correct what had gone wrong.

Five years on, that promise is part of what Ward 11 is voting on. In March this year Johannesburg officials returned to the area under an oversight programme covering wards 11, 12 and 13, with City Power, Johannesburg Water, Pikitup and City Parks taking part. The concerns identified were longstanding ones: electricity infrastructure, streetlights, illegal dumping and neglected public spaces. The city’s environment and infrastructure MMC, Jack Sekwaila, raised solar-powered lighting as a way to counter theft and vandalism of installations.

Mulelu welcomed the intervention and said residents expected results. “Residents expect to see visible progress on the ground,” the councillor said. The municipality has not established in that statement how much of the proposed work has since been completed.

The school has also been the setting for residents’ individual appeals. During the 2024 national elections Imameleng Raphuthing travelled from Molapo to Hitekani hoping to reach the president, fell to her knees and pleaded for help, saying she had spent years trying to obtain identity documents and birth certificates for her children.

For the ANC the ward presents two tasks at once: holding the seat and drawing back voters who stayed home in 2021. The party’s 2021 margin there was built on 45% turnout, and the 8 725 registered voters who did not cast a ballot that day are the larger pool.

Ramaphosa’s own history is bound up in the school. Should he walk through its gates again on November 4, the ward’s voters will be marking the record he leaves with them, not the one he arrived with in 2019.