DA to picket in support of MONC on Wednesday

28 March 2022

Note to Editors: Please find attached soundbite by Natasha Mazzone MP.

On Wednesday, the DA will show its support for DA Leader John Steenhuisen’s Motion of No Confidence (MONC) in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet by picketing outside Parliament.

Parliament is set to vote on the MONC on Wednesday, and the DA has written to the Speaker of the National Assembly, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, to request that serving Cabinet Ministers abstain from the vote to avoid a conflict of interest and that a manual roll-call voting procedure be employed to ensure that every parliamentary member’s voice is truly heard.

The DA tabled our MONC on 14 February 2022, after President Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) made it clear that useless, offending Ministers would receive a free ride once again.

The ANC government has had 27 years to bridge the economic divide and create a prosperous country for all who live here. Instead, under successive presidents, South Africa draws nearer to an irreversible economic implosion with more people joining the unemployment line daily.

President Ramaphosa’s government had the opportunity to grow the economy by easing the doing of business and fostering local and foreign investment. Instead, they allowed infrastructure to degenerate almost beyond repair, rolling blackouts to become part of our daily lives and poverty to flourish. While millions of South Africans are wondering where their next meal will come from, President Ramaphosa’s Ministers grew their bank balances through corruption – not even life-saving Covid-funds were too hallowed a ground to trample on. And still irrational lockdown regulations that hamper economic recovery persists.

President Ramaphosa seems blind or intentionally oblivious to his Cabinet’s callous ineptitude. For years he promised his Ministers would sign performance agreements. Once they were finally signed, it took 17 months before the Ministers were finally reviewed – not by the President as should have been the case. No, the DA had to review the Ministers. And they failed dismally – to no one’s surprise.

Only a third of the targets set in the performance agreements were reached, and we were being generous.

It is scandalous that the President would rather see the country’s destruction than call a comrade out for not doing his job, never mind sacking them. President Ramaphosa’s Cabinet is filled with morally corrupt individuals who are wholly incompetent. They should all be fired, and many should be criminally charged. At this point, the country would be better off having no Cabinet.

It is time for South Africans to make their voices heard loud and clear: We will no longer tolerate incompetence and the looting of the State. These good-for-nothing Cabinet Ministers must go!

Issued by Natasha Mazzone, Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, 28 March 2022