Lesufi should rather see Orania as a role model of good service delivery, as opposed to his empty promises
16 February 2024
The attacks launched by the Gauteng Premier, Panyaza Lesufi, on Orania are ridiculous. He should, instead, look a little deeper into the lessons that this community can teach him about public governance and service delivery, which stand in stark contrast to his empty promises.
His opportunistic and populist attacks on this self-governing community is a desperate attempt to divert attention away from his own unfulfilled promises, which he has to report on this Monday during his annual State of the Province Address (SOPA).
Lesufi has already indicated that he is bound to make another string of promises. It is no more than a desperate attempt to cover up the ANC's poor performance over the years and to rack up support for the upcoming elections.
Polls indicate that the ANC in Gauteng's support will drop to below 40% and Lesufi wants to turn this around at all costs.
His efforts to address Gauteng's lack of electricity have borne no fruit. The promised solar farms are not yet operational and Soweto's outstanding power bill still has not been written off.
The Soweto debt write-off is causing serious dissatisfaction among other communities and is clearly just an ANC election gimmick, because the ANC is unable to obtain a majority in Gauteng without support from Soweto.
The e-toll matter has been ridden to death, but it is still important to note that nothing has come of Lesufi's plan to implement the National Treasury's proposal that Gauteng should take on and settle 30% of the e-toll debt as part of abolishing the entire system.
Lesufi's appointment of thousands of peace wardens tasked with combating crime is also fundamentally flawed because of poor training and assigning expensive police patrol cars to inexperienced officials.
In addition, these appointments were, in effect, unlawful seeing as they were not approved by the Ministers of Police and Justice. The Minister of Justice did not proclaim the appointments in the Government Gazette, making all the appointments and subsequent actions of these peace wardens unlawful.
There are, of course, many more unfulfilled promises which were made as part of a desperate election ploy not to lose the province to the Multi-Party Charter.
It seems, however, that most of Lesufi's plans have boomeranged and are causing the ANC more damage. It is against this backdrop that he could have learnt a lesson or two from Orania about good governance and community management.
The FF Plus expects that on Monday evening many new promises will be made which will also remain unfulfilled, and looks forward to establishing a new and competent government in Gauteng as one of the partners in the Multi-Party Charter.
Issued by Anton Alberts, FF Plus national chairperson and MPL: Gauteng, 16 February 2024
