ANC failing to keep promises – DA

THE DA led thousands of marchers to the Union Buildings in Pretoria yesterday to address the country’s energy crisis.

Party leader Mmusi Maimane told the crowds that South Africans must do to the ANC what the party did to the apartheid regime, because the ANC “are not keeping up to their promises as the governing party”.

Eskom has been struggling to keep the lights on as the power utility battles a R420 billion debt burden from capacity issues and serious allegations of corruption.

The party was also demonstrating against the approaching electricity tariff hike of over 9.4%, which is expected to take effect from next week.

Maimane said the DA wanted the ANC to take note of the opposition party’s action plan in resolving Eskom’s energy debacle because the ANC “has exhausted all their plans” to keep the lights on.

“It is a complete failure of governance that has brought the country to the edge of collapse, with the whole nation subjected to recent electricity blackouts.

“The ANC is merely keeping the lights on now that the national elections are approaching,” he said.

According to Maimane, all the ministers in the cabinet knew that there was massive corruption going on between the governing party and Eskom and therefore the ANC is incapable of ironing out the crisis.

“Former president Jacob Zuma sold Eskom bit by bit to the Gupta family and everyone in the cabinet knew that, but the issue was not attended to at the time when it occurred. Also (Cyril) Ramaphosa was sent to fix the Eskom debacle and he came back and said it’s fixed but now the entire nation is facing a huge crisis.”

DA state capture spokesperson Natasha Mazzone said President Cyril Ramaphosa must cherish his last few days in office.

“On May 9 the whole of South Africa will wake up to Mmusi Maimane being the president of the country. Ramaphosa must enjoy his 40 days in the office of the presidency because we will be taking over as the DA,” she said.

Maimane promised that the DA would provide a job in every home, subsidies for small businesses so they can offer more jobs to young people, provide higher stipends for government interns and allow municipalities to buy electricity from independent power producers, which will be cheaper, according to him.

He said that South Africa could do away with SAA. “They ask me what I am going to get all the money that am promising the people. My answer to them is I would sell the incompetent SAA and use that money to increase children’s social grant to R800 and decrease the number of cabinet ministers to 20 because right now out of the 74 cabinet ministers some are redundant,” he said.

Similar DA protests are expected to be held across the country ahead of the elections.