Mayor’s luxury R700K car tops the agenda of poor municipality 

13 September 2016

The DA can today reveal that the Mayor of the ANC-led Mkhambathini Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Eric Ngcongo, is set to buy a new expensive mayoral car using public money. 

This follows a council meeting this week, where the matter was placed at the top of the agenda – ahead of pressing issues relating to service delivery, corruption and job creation. 

The new car is set to cost the public over R700 000, and its purchase relates to the Mayor’s unwillingness to use his predecessor’s vehicle, a 2011 Mercedes. It is still not clear what luxury vehicle the Mayor will buy with this budget.

This blatant disregard for the people, in a poor municipality grappling with high unemployment and deteriorating service delivery, deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms possible.

Where the DA governs, we ensure that money meant for the people is spent on the people. Just last week, the newly elected Mayor of the DA-led City of Tshwane, Solly Msimanga, banned the purchase and lease of luxury vehicles. 

Mayor Msimanga also uncovered the procurement of new luxury BMW cars for politicians paid out of public money by the previous administration. These vehicles are to be sent to the Tshwane Metro Police, where they will be used in a newly formed Anti-Hijack Unit.

This is the model of good governance which the ANC should learn from and emulate. But they won’t – because the party, from Jacob Zuma right down to its Mayors – care only for themselves. They put their interests first, and leave the people behind.

The DA will not stand for this. We will do everything we can, using council mechanisms, to stop the purchase of this latest luxury car. That money should rather be spent on services for the poor, not improving the lives of the politically connected elite.

Issued by Michael Wensly, DA Umkhambathini PR Councillor, 13 September 2016