COSATU Gauteng condemns the indifferent and big-headed Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba

9 April 2019

COSATU in Gauteng is perturbed by the indifferent and big-headed Mayor of Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba. Since the DA/EEF coalitions led by Mashaba in 2016, the people of Johannesburg are confronted by serious poor service delivery and they are all passing the buck instead of governing. This is the mayor who is erratic and only prepared to blame the ANC for his governance failures and everything that is wrong in the city. This is the same mayor who has blamed foreign nationals for crime in the city, sparking widespread xenophobic attacks. This is the very same mayor who arrested a hawker who was selling cow heads for a living.

Herman Mashaba has failed to account for the mess he has created in Alexandra. Instead of taking responsibility and account to the people of Alexandra, he continues with his famous blame game he has mastered two and a half years in government. Herman Mashaba has focused his energy not on service delivery but to write open letters to everyone, who is raising genuine service delivery challenges in the City of Johannesburg. The Minister of Tourism, Derick Hannekom raised an issue of pilling rubbish throughout Albertina Sisulu Street, Mashaba responded by challenging the Minister to his cleaning campaign through an open letter.

Over the past two years, service delivery has deteriorated in the working class areas such as Alexandra, Diepsloot, Orange Farm, Soweto and Cosmo City just to mention a few. Rubbish is not collected but dumped in front of schools, on the street and worse next to clinics. 

COSATU in Gauteng is calling for all residents of Johannesburg to mobilize themselves to fight these high levels of poor service delivery, lack of accountability and continuous shifting of responsibility by Herman Mashaba. Further to mass mobilization, COSATU is calling for Herman Mashaba to resign with immediate effect and for the voters to punish both the DA and the EFF at the polls next month.

We are also calling the Premier of Gauteng, David Makhura and President Cyril Ramaphosa to heed to the call by the people of Alexandra and give them a hearing as a matter of urgency.  

Issued by Dumisani Dakile, Provincial Spokesperson, COSATU Gauteng, 9 April 2019