RDP houses. File image for illustrative purposes.
Limpopo is fast becoming a ribbon-cutting province wherein government officials are in a marathon to officially hand over government-funded infrastructure projects to communities ahead of the 1 November municipal elections.
Some of the projects handed over to communities in recent months include RDP houses, bus and taxi ranks, bulk water projects, road infrastructure projects and sometimes multipurpose centres, sports complexes and shopping malls.
Although this has been praised and welcomed by residents, critics say the move is an ANC election gimmick aimed at wooing maximum support from eligible voters in favour of the ruling party at voting stations next month.
“It has become a tradition for the ANC to use government resources to garner support for the ANC before polls,” EFF Mopani regional secretary Bazooka Hlungwana said on Wednesday.
“What is more worrying is the fact that, weeks after the elections, most projects would be left unattended as white elephants, because the party has got what it wanted: the votes.”
Hlungwana added: “Not only is government involved in a marathon to hand over projects, but provincial departments and municipalities in all the 257 local and district councils are also working against the clock to launch projects before the election day.”
A concerned Giyani resident, Excellent Baloyi, agreed with Hlungwana. “It is wrong for the ANC-led government to use government resources to drum up support for the elections,” he said.
“We all pay taxes. Building a road in a far-flung rural village is not a favour, but a right, as enshrined in the constitution of this country.
It is the duty of every government department to deliver services to the people and not to ANC card-carrying members.
You know what they say: ‘You cannot praise a fish for swimming because that is what it is naturally meant to do’.”
But the mayor of the Greater Tzaneen local municipality Maripe Mangena and other ANC bigwigs in Limpopo do not think so.
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Addressing a media breakfast in Tzaneen on Tuesday, Mangena said the ANC had handed over lucrative government projects before, during and after the elections over the years.
For more than two months, Mangena has been crisscrossing the Tzaneen subregion, including its remote villages and farms, handing over projects such as roads and low-cost houses.
“There is nothing untoward about this. We are a caring government and we cannot stop improving the lives of the people because we would be called opportunists.
There is no electioneering here. It is just pure service delivery, nothing less, nothing more,” said Mangena.
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