TSHWANE MAYOR DASHES HOPES FOR BETTER ANC

The following speech was prepared in support of a DA motion of no confidence in the ANC Tshwane mayor Cllr Kgosientso Ramokgopa. The motion was to be debated at a Tshwane metro council meeting on Thursday, but was disallowed by the deputy speaker as being "impractical" in a very apparent attempt to protect the embattled Ramokgopa. The DA will be fighting all out to take Tshwane from the ANC in next year's municipal election.

Why should we debate a motion of no confidence in the mayor of South Africa’s capital city? Many of us would agree that Tshwane is governed better than most municipalities. Better than our long suffering neighbours in the North West, for example. Certainly better than Madibeng (Brits) next door.

As Bill Clinton would no doubt have reminded us, the only real question in politics is: compared to what? So perhaps, compared to Madibeng, Tshwane is a city of excellence – the city’s corporate slogan. Such a definition of excellence of course assumes that your scope for comparison ends at the southern boundary of the Free State and the Northern Cape and the western boundary of the Eastern Cape.

It also requires you to discount the recent contamination of the Apies River by the City of Tshwane, the buckling infrastructure at Wonderboom municipal airport and the dozens of informal settlements in and around Pretoria, Bronkhorstspruit and Cullinan which are yet to be upgraded, years after the mayor promised to do so.

On the Madibeng scale, some Tshwane councillors may even be tempted to believe that Tshwane is exceeding the ANC’s national standard. We know, for example, that President Zuma is not popular in Gauteng. We know that the Gauteng ANC leader Paul Mashatile disagrees with Minister Nhleko’s Nkandla report.

We’ve heard some of our ANC colleagues in Tshwane agree with Mr Mashatile. Some would even say that Mayor Ramokgopa, being aligned to Mr Mashatile’s faction, represents a better version of ANC government than President Zuma’s. The 2017 ANC National Conference may well signify someone else’s time to eat. And so we hear a lot of growling stomachs in Gauteng.

But then the DA in Tshwane uncovered the 2013 letter by the then finance minister Pravin Gordhan to mayor Ramokgopa. The minister warned the mayor that his proposed deal for the supply and management of pre-paid electricity meters did not offer the city value for money. The minister also warned, repeatedly it seems, that the city did not follow the lawful tender procedures in striking the deal with the supplier PEU.

Bloody cheek the minister has, don’t you think? After Nkandla, we didn’t hear minister Gordhan saying anything about value for money or lawful procurement procedures. Minister Gordhan also didn’t do much to stop the PEU deal from being approved by the ANC in this council. We have to agree with ANC comrades that Tshwane under mayor Ramokgopa hasn’t done anything the government of President Zuma wouldn’t have done. 

But such an admission has runious political consequences for the hopes of a better ANC. What logically follows is this: Mayor Ramokgopa is no better than President Zuma. Or in Twitter speak: #NoBetterThanZuma. As my DA colleague Councillor Brandon Topham has pointed out: in rand terms PEU constitutes several Nkandlas. Even Mr Mashitile’s faction of the ANC has to admit this.

Whatever his failings on Nkandla, minister Gordhan was absolutely right about PEU. The DA didn’t know about the minister’s letter at the time. In fact mayor Ramokgopa chose not to reveal the all-important letter to this council. But the contents of the letter echo the exact warnings of the DA back then: PEU represented ludicrously bad value for money and was undoubtedly illegal.

And yet, like a slick second hand car salesman the mayor went on to sell us the most expensive truckload of junk this city has ever bought. He ignored the minister, scoffed at the DA and staked his reputation on PEU. It now seems he didn’t even check the wares he was peddling to this council. He didn’t even read the fine print.

He signed on the dotted line and overpaid hundreds of millions of rand to PEU for pre-paid meters that aren’t up to the contractual standard. Hundreds of millions that could have prevented the contamination of the Apies River, upgraded some of the informal settlements which the mayor has so far neglected or rolled back the city’s gargantuan, investment-repellant, jobs-killing infrastructure backlog.

What does the mayor do then? He doesn’t confess his incompetence. He doesn’t return his truckload of junk, and sue PEU for contractual malperformance. Oh no! He passes the blame along to someone else. He says the only reason PEU had to be abandoned is because the city faced litigation over the deal – as if this mayor’s administration has ever had any problem losing court cases with other people’s money. 

Mayor Ramokgopa now makes President Zuma look like an amateur. PEU has punched a hole in his shiny façade. His slick, secondhand car salesman brand of politics will never again fool the media, residents or members of his party. Mayor Ramokgopa can never again claim to represent better government than offered by President Zuma. He has embarrassed Mr Mashatile’s faction of the ANC. 

If mayor Ramokgopa has any integrity, he will do two things. One: Apologise to the DA and his own comrades for misleading us on PEU – for not disclosing minister Gordhan’s letter to this council at the time that it voted on PEU. Two: tell us unequivocally that in exchange for seeing through this value-destroying, illegal deal, and for defending it to the very end, nobody in the City of Tshwane benefitted corruptly.

Cilliers Brink

Democratic Alliance councillor

Tshwane Metro