DA condemns Minister Didiza and MP Majodina for using taxpayers’ money to campaign for the ANC

31 March 2023

With many polls projecting that the ANC will achieve less than 50% of the vote in the 2024 national elections, the party’s appointees in government have, as an act of desperation, resorted to the unlawful use of taxpayer money to campaign for the ANC. The latest culprits in this unethical practice is the ANC Chief Whip in Parliament, Pemmy Majodina who used the ANC old looting tactics of hijacking Ministerial functions for political point scoring. Minister Thoko Didiza should know better that a government function cannot be used for political mobilization.

According to a flyer released by the ANC advertising the event, Department of Agriculture and Parliament of South Africa logos are used as a draw card to what is essentially an ANC event. Both Minister Didiza and Hon Majodina will apparently hand over garden tools to households in the Senqu Local Municipality tomorrow, 1 April 2023. This is a flagrant abuse of state resources and a gross violation of ethical conduct in political campaigns.

The DA calls on the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), in its capacity as South Africa’s electoral referee and custodian of the guidelines for electoral conduct, to immediately call the ANC to order and demand that it refrains from abuse of state funds to pursue its political programmes. Failure to do so will contaminate the electoral playing field and set a dangerous precedent in our electoral ecosystem.

It is highly likely that Minister Didiza and MP Majodina are blatantly engaging in this unethical conduct to ‘test the waters’ before other government departments join in on the channeling of state resources to ANC political events. For a party that is broke, and has been unable to pay its employees, the temptation to dip into public funds to bankroll its political campaigns remains very high.

As South Africans get ready to remove the cancer of ANC corruption in 2024, the DA exercise extra vigilance against a desperate ANC that will stop at nothing to ensure that it retains power by hook or crook. The unlawful conduct of Minister Didiza and MP Majodina in tomorrow’s ANC event has to be nipped in the bud before it contaminates the environment for free and fair elections.

Issued by Noko Masipa, DA Shadow Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, 31 March 2023