Name the Time and the Place Mr President

4 April 2019

I have noted the call of ANC President, My Cyril Ramaphosa for me to address the community of Alexandra.

Name the time and place Mr President, I will be there, I wonder if you will be.  I will account for the last two years of government and you can account for over two decades of government failure in Alexandra.

The City of Johannesburg has made numerous attempts to receive the memorandum and engage the community leadership to hear their grievances. All of this was to no avail, when ANC Ward Councillors obstructed this effort.

It is of interest that you make this call, dressed in ANC regalia, while it is your own Party that has both produced the catastrophic failure that is experienced in Alexandra today. Mr President it is your own party that has hijacked the legitimate grievances of this community ahead of the elections.

It is, in fact, the ANC that has promised the world to the community of Alexandra and delivered nothing for two decades. On the eve of the 2016 elections, it was the ANC Mayor of Johannesburg and the ANC Premier who signed the Alexandra Statement of Intent, promising the massive development, which has never been funded by the National or Provincial Grants.

Just before the 2011 Local Government Elections, the ANC promised the people of Alexandra 90 000 houses and the few that were built are occupied by foreign nationals. In 2007, President Mbeki made Alexandra a Presidential Priority Project and nothing materialised beyond this. The failures of the ANC in Alexandra now trace back over the tenures of 3 Presidents.

I have engaged the MEC of Human Settlements many times on this matter, and there has never been a commitment of funding forthcoming.

In light of this, I find President Ramaphosa’s call to me to meet the community of Alexandra insincere in the same manner that the ANC has treated the residents of Alexandra.

After less than three years, the multi-party government has a delivery record in Alexandra that exceeds many more years of ANC government in Alexandra.

It is for this reason that I am willing to call President Ramaphosa’s bluff, and I am willing to meet the people of Alexandra as I have on many occasions before. President Ramaphosa and the ANC have much to account for. I challenge President Ramaphosa to name the time and place to join me in a public meeting in Alexandra in which he too can account for his party’s atrocious treatment of the residents of Alexandra.

I am confident in my ability to account for the record of the multi-party government. I look forward to see you personally account for two decades of ANC failure that the multi-party government has begun to reverse in less than three years.

Issued by Luyanda Mfeka, Director: Mayoral Communications, 4 April 2019