Under-fire Mashaba wants inter-governmental Alex visit

Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba came under fire yesterday as he tip-toed around questions related to the Alexandra protest, and claimed his government was set up to fail through several attempts by the ANC to destabilise the city’s financial position.

Mashaba said yesterday during a press briefing that the ongoing Alexandra service delivery protests were an electioneering attempt to destabilise his government, and an attempt by the ANC to cling on to power after two decades of failed promises.

“Unfortunately, this is politics and it reveals the true nature of the ANC. It is a party that is desperate to hold onto its power and access to state resources by any means necessary,” said Mashaba.

“The ANC has resorted to a sinister strategy, which I describe as ‘the weaponisation of the state against the City of Johannesburg’. This term describes a systematic approach in which spheres of government, Chapter 9 institutions and law enforcement agencies were being used and abused to wage a political war against enemies of the ruling party.”

Mashaba said the attempts to undermine his government started with Eskom in early 2017 when the City of Johannesburg received a notice – six months after taking office – from Eskom that it would be ending a funding agreement it had with the city to the value of R300 million a year.

“This funding agreement had been in place with the city since 2011 and had been extended several times by Eskom. The agreement was to fund independent power production from the Kelvin power station to offset grid instability during load shedding.

“The last agreement, signed in 2014, saw the city being paid more than R900 million over a three-year period.

“In January 2017, we were informed that Eskom had no intention of extending this agreement with the new administration, leaving our residents to foot the bill,” said Mashaba.

When pressed as to why it was taking him so long to go and address the residents of Alex, Mashaba said he was busy preparing the city’s Integrated Development Plan budget which would be presented to the residents of Alex on April 15, after the arranged visit to the area with President Cyril Ramaphosa tomorrow.

“I wrote to President Ramaphosa yesterday and requested confirmation by the end of today, that his visit tomorrow should be an inter-governmental engagement with the community and not the planned political rally it is. Local, provincial and national government must stand side by side and account to the people of Alexandra,” said Mashaba.

He said he was committed to engage the community of Alex to hear their concerns.

“On Friday, I will be meeting councillors from the respective political parties in Alexandra so we can remove the politics from the equation and engage them as public representatives,” he said.

– gcinan@citizen.co.za

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