ONCE again City of Tshwane, the third largest city in the world in terms of land mass, and the country’s administrative capital, is a prime battleground in next week’s municipal elections.
During a campaign trail in Tshwane on Wednesday, DA’s leader John Steenhuisen said only his party can fix Tshwane because it has a proven track record of good service delivery than the ANC.
He also rejected any suggestions of forming any coalition with the ANC.
Steenhuisen also addressed various township residents in Pretoria during the party’s campaign in the area.
“Where the DA governs, jobs are highest, and unemployment is lowest. We spend public money on the public,” said Steenhuisen.
He appealed to the residents and potential voters to choose a government for Tshwane that will put the people first and make the metro great again: ‘a DA government’.
“When we took over from the ANC in 2016, Tshwane had a R2 billion operating deficit. Within the first year under the DA the metro had an operating surplus,” said Steenhuisen.
“For the first time in decades this metro had a solid financial foundation on which to build. The DA government cancelled a number of irregular contracts, including the ANC’s corrupt PEU smart meter scam, and it cleared the metro’s debt arrears to Eskom.”
He said all these steps led to Tshwane receiving an unqualified audit, and its credit rating with Moody’s went up two notches.
“This was a metro on the mend,” he said.
“And that is when the ANC chose to make its unlawful power grab. With the help of the EFF they disrupted council meetings and stayed away from votes so that nothing could be passed in council.”
“All of this was done just to give the provincial ANC government a pretext to take control of the City.
In the time that this metro was placed under ANC administration, they managed to drain the City’s finances, because that is what political parasites do.”
He said in the past year since the ANC administrators were kicked out and the DA took over, more than 20,000 water leaks have been repaired, more than 12,000 households have been connected to water and sewer networks, more than 600,000 metres of new water pipes have been installed and the Temba Waste Water Treatment Plant has been upgraded.
“Because that is what the DA does wherever it takes over from the ANC. We pick up the pieces, we clean out the rot, we clear the debt, we cancel the corrupt tenders, we get rid of the crooked officials and we place the needs of the residents at the heart of local government,” said Steenhuisen.
“The same thing happened down in Nelson Mandela Bay when we took over in 2016. There, the DA also turned a R2 billion debt into a R650 million surplus – along with cancelling over R600 million of corrupt contracts – all within the first year.”
He reiterated that wherever a DA government takes over from the ANC, corruption is stopped in its tracks and public money is fiercely protected.
But as soon as this happens, the ANC starts looking for opportunities to force its way back to the feeding trough, he said.
“And wherever our majority is small and our coalition partners are not entirely trustworthy, there is always a chance that they will find a way,” said Steenhuisen.
“In metros and municipalities where the DA succeeded in building a large enough majority to withstand such attacks, those places just went from strength to strength.
Cape Town is without a doubt South Africa’s best run metro, with the highest access to basic services, the lowest unemployment and the cleanest finances. And the only reason for this is because it has enjoyed multiple terms under a DA government.”
The ANC maintained this week that the party will regain control of Tshwane metro once it has regained the confidence of the city’s residents.
The ANC in the region was caught up in a bitter battle among its leaders, causing unrest throughout the capital in the run-up to the 2016 local government elections.
This eventually lead to the party failing to win support.
The city is now run by a Democratic Alliance-led coalition.
- Inside Politics
