Lesufi dumping jobs heartless

Call us gobsmacked: Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi’s vote-buying stratagems are looking wobbly just two months after the election and the burning of hundreds of millions in taxpayers’ money.

Angry beneficiaries of the Nasi iSpani programme that gave 32 000 people jobs as teaching assistants are about to blockade the education department offices in Tshwane because their contracts have been terminated.

Tragic as that sounds – and it is in a country with high unemployment – did some of you not realise you were being used as pawns in a game of vote-buying?

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Of course, the heartless way these people were given jobs – and hope – and then dumped with indecent haste after the election, is political cynicism at its worst.

Lesufi’s amaPanyaza crime wardens are also being pulled off the street, supposedly for “retraining” to turn them into traffic cops.

Wonder how many will find themselves on the streets when it turns out that department is overstaffed?

In the end, though, the squandering of taxpayers’ money and the brutalising of the dreams of jobless people did nothing to help the ANC, because it got just 35% of the vote in Gauteng.

How that has damaged Lesufi’s vaunting political ambition remains to be seen.

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