President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to come down hard on government officials who are failing to provide services to communities.

Ramaphosa was addressing the community of Ekuvukeni outside Ladysmith in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands on Saturday.

The community has been rocked by service delivery challenges including lack of water, broken sewerage pipes causing human waste to stream down the streets and no adequate housing. The community protested, blocked roads, burnt infrastructure and prevented children from attending school for about a month.

Ramaphosa asked the community to give the ANC government a chance to fix what's broken.

"You are justified in your grievances, however I ask that we open roads so that children can go to school, " Ramaphosa said.

Ramaphosa said he would make it his personal mission to ensure the provision of water in the area. "I will put a torch from Pretoria to see to it that these problems are being fixed.

"We will we bring a rapid response team to make sure that things are going well."

He asked the community not to punish the ANC at the polls for "things that will be fixed". The community has vowed not to take part in the upcoming general elections.

"All we ask is that we work together, these problems will be solved when we work together.

"We admit here and there we made mistakes in not providing adequate service delivery, but we are happy you are giving us another chance to fix our mistakes," he added.

Ramaphosa urged the community to not "give up" by not voting but rather to vote for the ANC as it had a plan to fix their problems.

Earlier, Ramaphosa also visited the Nazareth Baptist Church (Shembe) where he asked the church to pray for free and fair elections.

Ramaphosa was in KwaZulu-Natal this weekend to campaign ahead of the May 8 elections. His campaign started in Port Shepstone on Friday. He was accompanied by ANC provincial chairman Sihle Zikalala.