The truth about Midvaal Municipality

The ANC's charade conducted in Midvaal on Sunday typifies their attitude in government in Gauteng. In essence, it equates to a combination of a failure to deliver services after nearly 20 years in government coupled by the reality that people are looking elsewhere for a new political home (see report).

The automatic response of the ANC is therefore to identify a DA-run Municipality (Midvaal), ignore its record as the best performing municipality in Gauteng, and to conduct an exercise of very selective and insincere conversations with residents.

Here are some of the facts that the ANC have quite conveniently managed to miss in the charade they conducted on Sunday:

• The Midvaal Municipality has reduced unemployment from 24% to 10.7% since its tenure in government began in 2000.
• This has been achieved, amongst other key factors, by an economic growth of 15% per annum over the last decade.
• The following represent the change in levels of basic service delivery since the DA took over in 2000 from the ANC:

a. Water : 98.2% (2001: 90%)
b. Electricity: 89.3% (2001: 68%)
c. Sanitation: 93.5% (2001: 73%)
d. Refuse removal: 84% (2001: 58%)
e. Residents living in informal dwellings: 8% (2001: 15%)

• Any person who earns less than R3 200 a month qualifies for free basic services from the Midvaal municipality. In neighbouring ANC-governed Emfuleni, this threshold is only R2 160, meaning that a whole lot of poor people cannot access free basic services. In Emfuleni less than 40% of residents are satisfied with the performance of their municipality and 17 000 people live without any access to sanitation.
• According to Stats SA, Midvaal performs best on the provision of water and sanitation, with no backlogs at all. The Municipal Productivity Index, a survey of 226 municipalities across the country, ranked Midvaal first in Gauteng and 6th in the country for its response to poverty, access to basic services and municipal finances.

The real question here is how is it that the ANC has the audacity to walk into the best performing local municipality in Gauteng (Midvaal), run by the DA, and talk about service delivery and corruption?

The Democratic Alliance is encouraged by the ANC's latest demonstration of shamelessness, because a battle of comparison between ANC and DA service delivery in Gauteng is exactly what will fast rack the DA's win in Gauteng in 2014.

Statement issued by John Moodey, DA Provincial Leader, May 27 2013

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