The ANC targets Cape Town again - Helen Zille

The New Erasmus Commission

I was attending the Western Province Rugby Awards dinner on Tuesday night when I received this SMS from my son: "Mom and dad, our water has been cut off. What do we need to do?"

I smiled to myself and replied: "You obviously used too much water today. Wait until midnight and it will come back on again."

The "cut-off" was the result of the water management device I had installed in my home earlier this year. These devices provide each household with 200 litres of water a day, free, at the normal flow rate. People who register on the City of Cape Town's indigency database get 350 litres per day, free (the most generous free allocation in the country). Whatever is not used gets carried over to the next day. You can get additional water every day if you specify how much you are prepared to pay per month.

The purpose of the device is to save water (crucial in light of the growing shortages), to help residents avoid running up huge bills they cannot afford (often because of leaks), and to ensure that the municipality can viably provide every member of the public with access to free, clean water, as is their constitutional right.

Contrary to the ANC's propaganda, the City does not cut off water to domestic properties. In the most extreme circumstances, when people have failed to respond to overdue bills for months and months, they may be put on the trickle system. If your toilet cistern is filling up on the "trickle system" it will seem as if nothing is coming out of your tap until the cistern is full. That may be irritating and inconvenient, but in every instance where people are placed on the "trickle system" they could have avoided it by taking a small measure of personal responsibility. They could have gone to their local council office and made fair arrangements to pay off their arrears. Or they could have registered on the City's indigency database and had a free water management device installed. Then they would continue to get their generous free daily allocation on full flow. People who end up on the "trickle system" have made no effort to do either.

If people experience problems they can use the City's SMS line dedicated solely to dealing with water and sanitation problems. There is a 24-hour call out service for emergency cases.

No other City in the country offers this kind of comprehensive service.

And yet the Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, is devoting his energies to proving that the City of Cape Town is cutting off people's water and not delivering services.

Why is a national Minister targeting a municipality which is a model of good governance and efficiency in comparison with most ANC run local authorities? And why now?

For those who understand how the ANC works, the answer is obvious. The whole affair gives me a distinct sense of déjà vu.

It was a strange synchronicity that in the very week that we closed the final chapter of the Erasmus Commission, I received a letter from Minister Shiceka requesting me to report to a newly established Ministerial Task Team on Water Cut-offs, Electricity, Sanitation and Housing in the City of Cape Town.

This is another unlawful political witch-hunt, make no mistake.

Like the Erasmus Commission, it involves the abuse of state resources by the ANC for the purpose of smearing a DA-led government in the run-up to an election.

Like the Erasmus Commission, it reveals the ANC's underlying intolerance of democracy when it loses an election and its willingness to ride roughshod over the Constitution to achieve its political objectives.

And, like the Erasmus Commission, the Task Team is based on a flimsy pretext. According to Minister Shiceka, in a letter he wrote to Provincial Local Government Minister Anton Bredell, he decided to set up the Task Team because of a single letter from a member of the public with a water-related grievance. "This [letter] clearly demonstrates the problem is bigger than we have discovered. Consequently, I have decided to establish a Task Team comprising representatives from the three spheres, that is National, Provincial and Local Government," wrote Minister Shiceka.

The only other ‘evidence' that Minister Shiceka has of water cut-offs are from his visit to Cape Town last month when he discovered that some people in Mitchells Plain were without running water. The fact that it later emerged that this was the work of ANC activists has not deterred him.

When I went to Mitchells Plain to investigate, people told me that ANC activists had requested them to switch off their water at the stop-cock before the Minister's visit. The people I spoke to were so sure of their story that they were willing to make sworn affidavits to this effect.

It is worth quoting one of the affidavits in full:

On Tuesday 29 September 2009 at about 09h15, I heard a person calling on a loud hailer. I saw [name of ANC activist] and he was asking people to come to a meeting and bring along their water accounts.

He then approached me and asked me if I can turn my water off at the stop cork (sic) and when some one ask me about my water, I must say that my water was disconnected.

I then told him that I am not interested because my water is only R00.00 cents; I've only have to pay the connection fee of about R420.00 and that I also receive about 350 litres a day free.

I also state that this is not the first time that he is calling for the community to give them their water bills and to turn off their water.

The ANC's willingness to engage in dirty tricks knows no bounds. But, as with the Erasmus Commission, there are those who will argue that, if the City has nothing to hide, it will welcome the opportunity to ‘clear its name' by participating in the Task Team.

We refused to testify at the Erasmus Commission because it would have given credence to a process designed to impugn a DA-led administration for political purposes. Lies and distortions would have been presented in the press daily as if they were fact. The ANC are masters of the Goebbels school of propaganda: if you repeat a lie often enough, some people may begin to believe it.

It is for this reason that neither the City nor the Province will take part in the open session in Parliament arranged by the Task Team. Even the Erasmus Commission attempted to present a veneer of legality by appointing a judge to head it. The Task Team, by contrast, solely comprises ANC deployees such as former MEC for Local Government and Housing Richard Dyantyi (who played a key role in driving the Erasmus Commission).

If Minister Shiceka was really concerned about the state of service delivery in local government in general and Cape Town in particular, he would appoint an independent body to undertake a service delivery audit of every municipality in the country.

In fact this study has already been done. In a recent survey of 231 local municipalities, 46 district municipalities and six metropolitan municipalities, independent economic empowerment rating agency Empowerdex found that Cape Town was the best performer in terms of housing, water, waste removal and sanitation delivery. And this is despite the fact that there are 222 informal settlements, mostly on invaded land -- primarily the result of thousands of people fleeing the conditions in ANC governed provinces.

So why the obsession with Cape Town when it is obvious that the real problems are elsewhere?

Why is the Task Team not investigating the death of eight people from Mpheko village in the Eastern Cape after they drank tap water that had been polluted with faecal matter due to the municipality's failure to maintain the water treatment plant?

Why is the Task Team not investigating why sewage runs like a river down the streets of Odendaalsrus in the Free State (as I witnessed during the election campaign this year)?

Why is the Task Team not investigating the fact that Thokoza informal settlement in Gauteng has only four water points for tens of thousands of households?

The answer is that these things are happening in ANC-governed provinces and municipalities, so they are being covered up. Meanwhile, the DA is selectively targeted and smeared.

According to the legal advice we have received, the Task Team is unlawful because it disregards the principles of co-operative governance set out in the Constitution. I have today written to Minister Shiceka requesting that we meet to resolve the matter, as envisaged in the Intergovernmental Relations Act. I hope that we can avoid an intergovernmental dispute. But, if necessary, I am willing to fight this power abuse all the way to the constitutional court. The ANC's abuse of power is the single greatest threat to our democracy, in every context, and we have to take a stand to stop it.

Minister Shiceka has reportedly put the hearings on hold until he receives legal advice on the matter. To assist, I would be quite happy to furnish him with a copy of the Erasmus Commission Court Judgment. After all, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

This article by Helen Zille first appeared in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, November 6 2009

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter

Services Subscribe to newsletters News feeds Share this article Facebook Google Laaik.it Yahoo! Digg del.icio.us

Comments

 

responses to this article

Well Done Helen! Nice to see a solid logical argument and explanation from a politician. by Just Wondering on November 06 2009, 14:14 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

Helen is vain It is called vanity and insanity when you write an article and applaud it yourself Helen (code named Just wondering). Shouldn't you leave that to us to do? I guess you don't understand what that means, do you? by Vanity plus insanity = Zille on November 09 2009, 09:31 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

@ Vanity plus insanity = Zille Are you really that stupid or was it just a bad day? Did you even read the article or do you just go around insulting other comments? Why don't you add something of value in regard to what the ANC government are doing to undermine the DA in the . .more Western Cape? You might find that if you read the articles and actually engage in the issues, you will learn something. Well done to Helen and the DA in the Western Cape, not only for standing their ground against the ANC bullies, but for being so proactive in their service delivery. The rest of the country could learn a thing or two from you guys. . .less by Samjank on November 09 2009, 10:21 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

Why don't we get free water in Gauteng??? What a brilliant water management scheme! No wonder Cape Town rates as the best run municipality. .. but I won't be holding my breath for a similar scheme to be implemented here in Gauteng. Just imagine Nomvula Mokonyane or Qedani Mahlangu being . .more limited to 350 litres a day! They don't pay for their services so why should they suffer water limits. Viva Helen. You put these fatcats to SHAME! . .less by Saffer on November 09 2009, 11:38 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

cape town ANC must deliver in other townships get rid of corrupt officials and stop this rubbish about winning capetown it is NOT going to HAPPEN by ivan on November 09 2009, 11:53 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

worried I painfully left my hometown (Durban) due to economic circumstances and as a result I am now wandering all over the country. Whilst I am going through this, it pains me to witness the level to which political debate has deteriorated in our country. I am . .more worried about the trajectory our body politics has embarked upon. If this continues unabated, one will probably lose faith in both our political system and economic system. You can fathom the consequences thereof. May God bless Africa and South Africa and return the voice of reason. . .less by King Zwakala on November 09 2009, 12:53 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

Pity the province which rejects the ANC, because the ANC does not respect democracy, nor the democratic right of voters to choose who should rule them. The ANC has diverted state funds and manpower to the exercise of making life difficult for the Western Cape Government, requiring Helen Zille and her team . .more to devote an inordinate amount of their time to counter the ANC's spoiling tactics. The ANC has appointed Membathisi Mdladlana to lead the ANC's charge in the Western Cape. This failed Minister of Labour who has presided over the most massive job losses ever, and has failed the workers and the country on so many fronts, started off on the usual ANC tack of lies and distortions, claiming inter alia that the enormous influx of migrants to Cape Town is simply a manifestation of urbanisation, and that a methodologically flawed report privately undertaken by two UCT academics which claimed that Cape Town is a racist city, was a " UCT Development Research Unit report". He also slammed Cape Town for perceived lack of "transformation", conveniently ignoring the fact that ethnic blacks are a minority in Cape Town. The current ANC leadership is a disgrace to democracy and the country, and the Western Cape should keep the ANC out of government in the Province until such time as the ANC is less corrupt. . .less by flebus on November 09 2009, 15:00 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

Yes! Well done Helen - and your team Thank you for your hard work and tireless efforts in exposing corruption. by ever hopeful on November 09 2009, 17:31 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

Shiceka and the ANC are just corrupt and plain stupid. Why do they only ask about the only Metropole that is not ANC controlled? Like ESKOM they will only acknowledge that there is a problem when the lights go out. by semaarnet on November 09 2009, 21:57 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

@pikinny zwakala Call yourself a king? You are nothing more than a dog turd lying on the stoep. The implications of your "loss of faith" indicate nothing more ( or less) than a Zimbabweanisation of the SA economy. is that REALLY, TRULY what you . .more want? You might be surprised at the ferocity with which a black man treats his fellow black when he is intoxicated with the methylated spirits of african power. You will wish for the return of Verwoerd . .less by cassandra on November 09 2009, 22:14 Find this comment inappropriate? Report it

Name
Subject
Comment