DA 7 years misrule in Tshwane

15 March 2023

The African National Congress (ANC) will embark on a local service delivery march in Tshwane on Friday, 17 March 2023. The ANC will launch the #BuyaTshwane People's Campaign led by the Secretary-General of the ANC Cde Fikile Mbalula, the Gauteng ANC leadership and the Alliance partners. The march will also be joined by members of the National Executive Committee the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) as well as progressive civil society stakeholders.

The ANC believes that the emergence of coalition governments at local government level is a product of unintended consequence of service delivery lapses and intractable governance challenges faced by successive ANC local government leadership over the years.

Coalition politics in Tshwane under the leadership of the DA have been steeped in skewed service delivery, which has very little to do with tackling the plight of poor black African people, who are in the majority. It is an open secret that the DA agenda remains the advancing of other political interests that do not include addressing the plight of the poor.

The Tshwane City Council experienced instability when the governing DA-led coalition collapsed after only two years in office. The DA's first mayor between 2016 and 2019, Solly Msimanga, awarded a contract to engineering consultants GladAfrica. This was later found to be irregular by the Auditor-General.

Towards, the end of 2018, the DA-led coalition acknowledged that the awarding of a tender to roll out infrastructure projects valued at R12 billion to GladAfrica was irregular, after a leaked preliminary report by the AG found it did not comply with Municipal Supply Chain Management regulations.

As a consequence, in February 2019, the DA elected a new Mayor, Stevens Mokgalapa. It is public knowledge that Mokgalapa's tenure was similarly troubled after he was overheard calling Tshwane speaker Katlego Matheba a "witch" and accusing the MMC of finance Mare-Lise Fourie of leaking information. The litany of blunders committed by Mokgalapa exposed the DA-led coalition as a troubled house of cards.

These blunders led to a fractious alliance between the DA and the EFF. This led to the then Premier of Gauteng, David Makhura placing the City under administration as it had failed to carry out its constitutional obligations. The mismanagement of the City led to a collapse in service delivery, adversely affecting residents.

Yet another DA Mayor Randall Williams was elected as the Executive Mayor of the City of Tshwane on 20 October 2020.

In January 2023, the Auditor General reported irregular expenditure of R 10 billion, and unauthorised expenditure of over R 600 million. Fruitless & wasteful expenditure understated by over R 1 billion, and unjustified SCM deviations of over R 480 million. Furthermore, a material misstatement of assets under construction and disclosed as completed, which means they were overstated by R 2 billion, assets worth over R 52 billion were not properly accounted for, not valued properly and the impairment of those assets was not properly assessed and leave pay amount of over R 800 million not properly accounted for, as well as loans and bonds amounting to over R 800 million were not correctly accounted for. On 13 February 2023, Williams announced his resignation as mayor.

Following these developments, Dr. Makwarela, a member of COPE, who took over on 28 February 2023 would resign less than two weeks later over an insolvency scandal.

Once again, the DA did not fail to show its true colours, when it unleashed the most anti-democratic tactic since the dawn of democracy, when it forced its Councillors to number their ballots in order for their Party Agents to be able to identify who voted for which candidate. This is the most brutal attack on democracy which suggests the DA places more importance to preserving its hold onto power over Constitutional rights entrenched in our constitution. It was rather shameless of the DA to spend money on legal opinions in attempts to justify their scorn on the constitution.

The DA over the last 7 years has been unapologetic in its segregated treatment of citizens based on class and race. It is precisely this conduct that has sown seeds of discord and mistrust in the successive DA-led coalitions in the City of Tshwane.

Our commitment to uproot corruption in all its manifestations has never been stronger. It is on that basis that we believe that the corruption, maladministration, and lack of transparency have been the hallmarks of governance in Tshwane since 2016. This is precisely so because the DA-led coalitions are not grounded on principle, but rather on populism and stubborn ideal to preserve the status quo at all costs. The DA in Tshwane over the past 7 years has focused on producing scandals and paid scant regard to service delivery outcomes. This is the reason the ANC, its alliance partners and civil society will lead the #BuyaTshwane people's march. As the ANC, we believe that it is no small feat when the Capital City of our country struggles to achieve stability. The people of Tshwane deserve better.

Under the DA multi-party coalition, R85 million was paid to workers who never worked in the Environment Project, the revenue division has all but collapsed and the city fleet was recalled, and there is no tender in place. Furthermore, the yellow plant tender is in court and facing a protracted litigation process, all road projects have been cancelled, with all of them ironically in black communities. In addition, waste collection trucks have been reduced in regions and this has affected refuse collection. The DA further cancelled Employee Work Initiative Programs, Wi-Fi services all over the City, townships, and hotspot areas, and also destroyed township development, and most residents of Tshwane are currently struggling with access to road services and transport networks because the Bus Rapid Transport system is no longer functioning in most parts of the capital city. The DA has claimed that where they govern, the govern better.

Tshwane is a glaring demonstration that the opposite is true. We must ask the hard question: What has happened to all these initiatives and others intended to improve the lives of the people of Tshwane?

This pattern of skewed service delivery, governance lapses runs across all DA-led metros in varying degrees. This includes the City of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. This is the truth behind the lie that DA-governed metro fare better.

The #BuyaTshwane People's March will take place as follows:

Date : 17 March 2023

Assembly time : 10:00am

Meeting point : Marabastaad bus depot

End point : City of Tshwane Municipality

Issued by Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri, ANC National Spokesperson, 16 March 2023