The ANC in Gauteng began its election campaign in Midvaal by conducting door-to-door visits. Teams of ANC volunteers went to all 13 wards in the area
"It equates to a combination of a failure to deliver services after nearly 20 years in government, coupled by the reality that people are looking elsewhere for a new political home," Democratic Alliance Gauteng leader John Moodey said on Monday.
"The automatic response of the ANC is therefore to identify a DA-run municipality [Midvaal], ignore its record as the best performing municipality in Gauteng, and to conduct an exercise of very selective and insincere conversations with residents."
The ANC in Gauteng began its election campaign in Midvaal on Sunday by conducting door-to-door visits. Teams of ANC volunteers went to all 13 wards in the area, speaking to residents.
The ruling party accused the DA-led Midvaal municipality of being corrupt, hampering development in the area, and only delivering services to whites.
ANC provincial chairperson Paul Mashatile visited three farming communities in the area. Residents complained about a lack of services such as water, electricity and sanitation.
Moodey said the ANC had conveniently missed some facts.
Accessing free basic services
There had been a change in the levels of basic service delivery since the DA took over the municipality in 2000. Water supply had risen from 90% in 2001 to 98.2%, electricity 68% to 89.3%, and sanitation 73% to 93.5%, he said.
The number of residents living in informal housing had decreased from 15% to 8%.
Any person who earned less than R3 200 a month qualified for free basic services from the municipality.
On Sunday, a woman living on an abandoned chicken farm told Mashatile she had no water, electricity or sanitation. She claimed a local DA councillor said the municipality could not supply water to a private property. Electricity to the property had also been cut.
Moodey compared Midvaal to the ANC-run Emfuleni.
The salary threshold in Emfuleni was R2 160, meaning that many of the poor could not access free basic services, he said.
'Service delivery and corruption'
Less than 40% of residents were satisfied with the performance of the Emfuleni municipality and 17 000 people lived without any access to sanitation.
According to Statistics SA, Midvaal performed best on the provision of water and sanitation, with no backlogs.
The municipal productivity ndex, a survey of 226 municipalities across the country, ranked Midvaal first in Gauteng and sixth in the country, for its response to poverty, access to basic services, and municipal finances, said Moodey.
"The real question here is how is it that the ANC has the audacity to walk into the best performing local municipality in Gauteng [Midvaal], run by the DA, and talk about service delivery and corruption?
"The DA is encouraged by the ANC's latest demonstration of shamelessness, because a battle of comparison between ANC and DA service delivery in Gauteng is exactly what will fast rack the DA's win in Gauteng in 2014," said Moodey. – Sapa