Official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon took to the streets of Mitchells Plain on Monday, where his party is fighting a key by-election against Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats in the coloured working-class district of Tafelsig.
He argued that voters were being given a chance to vote against De Lille’s flirtation with the African National Congress ”reign of ruin”. The ANC ruled the city for four years until March.
The seat is seen as pivotal for both parties as the ID councillor for the area, Sheval Arendse, recently resigned the Tafelsig seat on the Cape Town city council, and is now standing as the DA candidate. He protested against his party supporting the ANC candidate for mayor, Nomiandia Mfeketo, against DA candidate Helen Zille, who became mayor in March.
Amid posters saying ”die ID en die ANC is saam, vote DA” (the ID and the ANC work together, vote DA), Leon greeted people in Botrivier and Sentinal streets — together with a band from the Cape Town minstrels.
At one of the first houses Patricia Cornelius, who works at Groote Schuur hospital as a cleaner, asked Leon what should be done about the key problem in the area: youths who lurked on street corners with little to do. She told I-Net Bridge that many of the coloured youths did not get jobs, but incoming black workers did.
Leon told her that the DA-led council administration under Mayor Helen Zille would first of all make access to council jobs — and jobs on council projects — non-racial and aimed at those living ”in die omgewing” (those from the district). He said that it was ”a shocking indictment” that half of the capital budget of the city council while under ANC administration had not been spent in the last year.
Road projects did not happen and he noted that the Vanguard housing project nearby had ”grass growing over the foundations”. That was all changing now, he said, promising that in future all capital budgets for the areas would be spent.
The DA-led administration took over after the municipal election in March — but it enjoys just a one-seat majority. This would be increased to two if the DA won the by-election on June 7, he noted.
As women in DA sweaters wandered about — many emblazoned with ”Vat Mitchells Plein terug” (Take Mitchells Plain back) — Leon spoke to people along the streets. An elderly voter, Margaret Petersen, also raised the matter of feckless youths on street corners.
Leon said while there were ”no miracles overnight”, he said the city and the provincial government were working on plans to raise local growth to 8% to allow for absorption of labour. At the same time the council had announced a plan with three banks to assist those in the R3 500 to R7 000 a month bracket to gain access to housing loans.
This, he hoped, would take about 100 000 off the housing list in Cape Town — of a total of 250 000. Those houses built could then be directed to the poorest of the poor.
Leon said that the people of Tafelsig had a chance ”to express the outrage of the voters in Cape Town and the Western Cape at De Lille and her party for aligning with the ANC, voting for Monaindia Mfeketo as mayor and then voting to retain Wallace Mgoqi as city manager”.
Last week the Cape High Court ruled that Mgoqi was out of a job.
”These two individuals are alleged to have presided over a thieves’ banquet of corruption, of mismanagement and enrichment for family and friends. Even by the rather low standards of probity of the ANC as a whole, the ANC in Cape Town was extraordinarily bad, and is alleged to have perpetrated some of the worst corruption in the nation in the shortest possible space of time.
”While the full extent of the Mfeketo/Mgoqi reign of ruin has yet to be revealed … what we do know, aside from all the dubious tenders and dodgy contracts, is that R100-million of ratepayers’ money was spent last year to get rid of senior managers who could do the job and to replace them with cronies and insiders close to the previous ANC-led regime.”
The excuse was transformation, ”but in truth the ANC was using the race card as a cash card”, he charged.
”In all of this Patricia de Lille is on the wrong side. For a woman in a party which is supposed to fight corruption, it is both sad and pathetic to see how she has backed the ANC and its corrupt regime.”
The ANC is not standing in the ward while the ID is putting up June Frans, a community worker. — I-Net Bridge