ANC mayoral candidates must be named – DA

THE DA has called on the ANC to name its mayoral candidates for the metropolitan municipalities that the parties will contest during the local government elections on August 3.

The DA made the call yesterday as it announced that four metropolitan councils run by the ANC had indulged in unauthorised‚ irregular‚ wasteful and fruitless expenditure to the tune of billions last year‚ while Cape Town showed the cleanest financials of any metro.

The ANC said this week it was not ready to give the names of its mayoral candidates.

ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe said the names would be decided on at a special national executive committee meeting.

The DA’s mayoral candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay, Athol Trollip‚ said yesterday voters deserved to know who the ANC’s mayoral candidates were‚ and who in the ANC would take responsibility for fixing the mess they had left the country’s cities in.

Trollip said the ANC’s delay in naming its mayoral candidates meant the people of the too-close-to-call metros in this election had not yet been given the opportunity by the ANC to fairly and openly interrogate their options this year.

The DA says the Tshwane‚ Johannesburg‚ Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay municipalities are the battleground metros in this year’s elections.

“It has been 46 days since the ANC launched its manifesto‚ and yet in that time it has only been the DA whose mayoral candidates have been on the ground engaging voters on issues important to them and their lives,” Trollip said.

“We now challenge the ANC to name its candidates publicly without delay‚ and we challenge Mantashe to commit the ANC’s candidates to a series of public debates with us.”

The DA’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg‚ businessman Herman Mashaba‚ said his party stood for transparency and openness and was ready for every voter to test it on its election promises.

Meanwhile, the three ANC-run metropolitan municipalities in Gauteng and one in the Eastern Cape had cost the country close to R20-billion in irregular and wasteful expenditure in the past five years, the party said.

This compared with the R20-million incurred by the DA-run Cape Town municipality, Trollip, Mashaba and the mayoral candidates of the City of Tshwane, Solly Msimanga, and Ekurhuleni, Ghaleb Cachalia, claimed.

They said Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Des van Rooyen had confirmed in a parliamentary reply that ANC-run metros had dismal financial management records compared with the DA-run Cape Town metro.

The DA candidates outlined a number of interventions they would make should the DA win the metros.

These included a ban on councillors and their family members doing business with the municipalities‚ and opening of all tender processes at the bid adjudication process to the public to ensure transparency.

The DA also promised to target a 99% debt collection for services‚ the filling of critical posts immediately and implementing accurate and fair billing for all residents.

The party said it also wanted to restructure the bloated administration and employ people suitable for the role.

It also wanted to prioritise the transfer of title deeds, it said.

“When you give the public their title deeds‚ you give them pride and leverage to raise money‚” DA mayoral candidate for Tshwane Solly Msimanga said.

Other plans outlined by the DA were to increase the repair‚ maintenance and refurbishment budgets of municipalities instead of replacing infrastructure at a greater cost.

“The ANC waits for something to break before fixing it‚” Msimanga said.