DA stops ‘pocket before people’ graft
THE STORY of South Africa is that change is difficult but inevitable, and that when change comes you either adapt or are left behind.
The lead-up to 1994 was a clear example of this kind of change, equally was the lead-up to last year’s local government elections where the people of Joburg voted for the opposition to lead the country’s economic capital.
The ANC has not accepted this change, primarily because they did not expect to lose Joburg and they still had plans to continue looting the city and the people’s money for their own selfish enterprise.
It was for this reason that the DA and mayor Herman Mashaba campaigned around three broad commitments: create job opportunities, deliver quality services and stop corruption.
Mashaba went further, in direct response to the high level of corruption by declaring corruption “public enemy number one”.
Gone are the days when the ANC and its crooked deployments put their pockets before the people.
The new DA-led government has ushered in a new beginning, where the government and politicians are accountable to the people who elected them to serve.
For the first time the people of Joburg, especially the poor, can feel and see the government working for them and with them. With Mashaba at the wheel Joburg is headed in the right direction.
The ANC in Joburg wants to rob the people of Joburg of its hard-working and people-centred mayor.
Almost two years later, the previous administration is still mourning its defeat at the polls.
They have been saying they want the hard-working Mashaba, and city council speaker, Vasco da Gama, gone.
Their biggest sin seems to be that they have been delivering services to the people of Joburg and fighting corruption that had become endemic since the ANC ran the government of the city.
To this end they have tabled a motion of no confidence in both the mayor and the speaker scheduled for debate and voting tomorrow.
The official reasons that the ANC gives for wanting Mashaba out is a claim that the “financial status of City of Johannesburg has reached a state of paralysis and that the municipality is on the brink of collapse”.
At this point you, like me, might be wondering which planet the ANC comrades are coming from or living on for there is no state of paralysis with Joburg finances.
What they might be referring to is that they no longer have access to the dispensing of patronage in Joburg since the voters rejected them on August 3 last year.
The hard reality is that Mashaba’s administration has uncovered 2 000 cases of ANC-linked corruption worth R17 billion, which are being investigated.
This scares the ANC but it also means the DA-led coalition government will in future have more money to invest in the people of Joburg, espe- cially the poor.
The people’s mayor have also delivered title deeds to poor residents who now own the homes they live in; the city is also safer with 1 500 more Joburg Metro Police Department (JPMD) officers on the streets.
Since they were booted out of power, the ANC has been trying everything to destabilise the DA-led coalition government of Joburg.
They have used every trick in their political book to unsettle Mashaba and his administration.
The biggest issue the ANC has with Mashaba is that he has proved popular with the residents of Joburg by fighting corruption, improving service delivery to the residents of the city, employing additional JMPD officers and extending clinics’ and libraries’ operating times.
The trust between the city’s residents and the administration has improved tremendously.
Residents of Joburg now have a government that truly works for them.
Mashaba’s mandate is until 2021, and he will do even more for the people of Joburg between now and then. Makashule Gana
DA spokesperson on Cogta/ human settlements