Congress of the people’s West Rand regional organiser, Nicodemus Phake is up in arms after municipal workers in ANC t-shirts allegedly distributed food parcels at the Zenzele informal settlement on 8 January.
According to Phake, this is typical of the ANC-led West Rand municipalities.
“We have it on a good authority that people are being bought with food parcels ahead of the national elections.
“It is rather intriguing to see the municipality suddenly embarking on community outreach programmes where they distribute food parcels.
“My problem with this is that it is a once-off initiative which dies down after winning the votes.
“Experience has taught us that this happens once in every five years” says Phake.
“They can fool some people but they will never fool us all”
In response to this, Randfontein Local Municipality spokesperson Lucky Chiya rubbishes these claims and says that he knows nothing of this.
“I know nothing about the distribution of food parcels, especially on 8 January.
“The only time we hand out food parcels is in conjunction with the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) and never on our own.” says Chiya.
Meanwhile, the West Rand Distsrict Municipality spokesperson Denis Mangope who also speaks for the ANC in the West Rand has fired back with comment, saying that it is unfortunate that the opposition party fails to see their efforts as the ruling party.
“We often identify people that are in needy situations and assist where we can.
“I can confirm that us assisting people is not a ‘once off’ initiative and an example of this would be when we stepped in to assist residents of Toekomsrus and Mogale City after their houses were severely damaged by the hail that hit the West Rand recently
“These are but some of the many ways in which we assist the people of our region, therefore it is incorrect for Phake to level such allegations against us.
“Clearly he fails to see our consistent efforts in bettering the lives of our people,” says Mangope.
