DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga
Democratic Alliance (DA) Gauteng premier candidate Solly Msimanga said the much-criticised Nasi iSpani jobs initiative for young people created under the current premier, Panyaza Lesufi, required investigation.
Msimanga was speaking to the Mail & Guardian on Thursday after delivering the party’s State of the Province address in Johannesburg.
Nasi Ispani, which was launched in June last year, has been criticised by the DA and other political parties, who have accused Lesufi of using it as an ANC cadre deployment project and a way of electioneering.
Msimanga said the value of Nasi iSpani needed to be looked into, because the scheme had taken money from departments such as social development.
Asked whether he would scrap the programme if he was elected premier, he did not respond directly, saying only that there could be value in the initiative.
“I am not going to come and say there is no value in having a teacher assistant at schools, additional [crime-fighting] wardens to ensure there is safety and security — the DA does that in the Western Cape,” he said.
But he added that the initiative needed to be implemented in a way that was financially sustainable and not using money intended for other projects.
“Panyaza doesn’t have a plan past June this year about Nasi iSpani. If they retain power you will see that they will say ‘we need to review this because there are finances around this that need to be revisited’.”
Msimanga said the DA believed it was important to investigate whether crime wardens were playing an effective role, adding: “Once you determine if this programme is worth carrying forward, while you might be having good people within the system, we have asked the question, what is the process followed to make sure you don’t have those that are not suitable looking after our children.”
Meanwhile, the DA has been accused of failing to deliver services in the City of Tshwane, with the treasury threatening to cut off its conditional grants of R629 million after the municipality failed to spend allocations in the 2023-24 financial year.
On Monday, Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink said the metro aimed to collect R1 billion a month for the next six months from defaulting customers and businesses as part of its financial rescue mission.
Last year Tshwane came under fire after several people died in Hammanskraal from cholera linked to contaminated water.
But in a media briefing after the State of the Province address, Msimanga blamed former water and sanitation minister Nomvula Mokonyane for the failure to produce clean water for the people of Hammanskraal.
“We were dealing with the issues of water in 2017 already. We went out on tender, we received a favourable tender and the national treasury said we can go ahead because we wanted to do a public-private partnership,” he said.
But, he said, bulk water supply is not only the competency of a municipality. “You need a national office and minister to give the go-ahead, which Nomvula Mokonyane said ‘you are never gonna get from us.’”
“We can not be entirely blamed for something that happened when we were ready to start implementing in 2017. We were blocked by the national minister for political reasons and we have seen the near calamity that ensued when people died or got sick because of the cholera outbreak,” he added.
Msimanga also defended DA national leader John Steenhuisen after he came under fire for comparing the Gauteng crime wardens to “drunkards out of a shebeen in Pep-bought uniforms” while on the campaign trail in Pretoria last month. Because most of the wardens are black — as are the majority of people who shop at budget retailer Pep — critics said Steenhuisen’s comments were racist, a charge he denied.
On Thursday Msimanga said the semantics of what an individual said mattered very little and that what mattered to the people the most was what they would get as the alternative to deal with the hardships they were facing.
“Is there better prospects of better employment, better services that they are going to get? This is the message that we are taking to the ground. The reception has been quite good and people are saying we are looking for an alternative right now,” he said.