PRETORIA: Municipal employees in Tshwane are depressed about the possibility of losing their jobs if the DA takes control of the capital city, they said yesterday.
As the reality of the imminent change of political administration hits home, staff members expressed their fears over the new era. The DA won the majority of votes in last week's municipal polls in the city.
This comes at a time when the top leadership of the ANC is set to meet this weekend as the party looks to deal with the fallout over its performance in the local government elections. The ANC has been thrown into crisis by its performance in the elections, which saw it emerge the overall winner but lose key metros to the opposition.
The Tshwane workers told the Cape Times' sister newspaper, the Pretoria News, they feared they may be kicked out of their jobs by DA “mayor-elect” Solly Msimanga.
Others took to social media to express their frustrations, among them the city’s spokesman Selby Bokaba, barely a day after the DA hosted a rally at Freedom Park to celebrate its election victory.
Msimanga did not help matters by declaring that he would change the leadership of the Tshwane metro police department when he took over the highest office in the city.
He hinted that some employees would be retained, but was sure that the days of chief of police Steven Ngobeni were numbered.
However, Msimanga said he had no intention of purging workers at the municipality. But that did not do much to assure the workers that their jobs were safe.
Bokaba likened the mood at Isivuno House municipal headquarters to a graveyard, saying it was very quiet. Another blogger, Molebatsi Mogwere, commented that many municipal workers feared being booted out of their positions because they were hired without the requisite qualifications.
Mogwere wrote that people were scared of losing their jobs because the DA “signalled that it would get rid of those without higher education qualifications”.
A senior official at the metro police said Msimanga’s comments about Ngobeni’s fate were reckless and unfounded.
According to the official, the mood among the metro police officers was not affected by the recent developments. “We are not politicians. We are the metro police and we prefer to leave these issues to be handled by politicians,” he said.
At the municipal offices in Atteridgeville, workers said their morale was low because they had not anticipated the election results to go in the DA’s favour.
They were unsure if they would still have their jobs under a possible DA government, but vowed to continue rendering services to communities until their fate had been decided.