MEC loses it in text tirade
● Gauteng co-operative governance MEC Lebogang Maile has come under fire in parliament for losing his cool in an exchange with a member of the public who complained about having his electricity cut off.
Maile sent text messages to Tshwane resident Lucky Nkhwashu saying, in part: “Don’t start with me, I didn’t switch off your electricity, do I say you must not pay? I’m not your friend, I have handed you over to people who must help you, what more do you want from me. F*** you, you don’t know me bloody Askari, I’ll mess you up you bastard.”
During a meeting of the co-operative governance & traditional affairs portfolio committee on Thursday, EFF MP Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi confronted Maile over the exchange.
The MEC responded that Nkhwashu had sought special favours, indicating that he was a member of the ANC and oozing a sense of entitlement.
Maile said it turned out that Nkhwashu’s electricity had been disconnected due to nonpayment.
“We can’t allow people to use the name of the ANC and drag it in the mud,” Maile said.
But Mkhaliphi told the MEC he should not have lost his temper. “Refrain from responding to the public when you are angry, whether the person is wrong or not. You are a leader and there’s no justification to respond in the manner you did.”
Nkhwashu denied Maile’s version of their exchange. He said that because of the lockdown, he could not afford to pay his electricity bill and was disconnected on May 17.
He said he contacted the City of Tshwane and one of its electricity suppliers to object, arguing that cutting off his power during the lockdown was illegal. When he got nowhere, he approached Maile.
“I was asking which act creates this relationship between the city and this company, and how is it in the interest of the people?” Nkhwashu said he asked Maile, as he had asked other leaders, why the ANC-led government had never probed the pre-democracy arrangement that Tshwane had with the service provider in question.
“My fight with Lebogang started there because he said I was getting into politics and that he had been in politics for a long time. “That’s when I said to him I have been a member of the ANC for years, from when it was illegal. That’s how the whole ANC membership thing came up,” said Nkhwashu.