Johannesburg - Whichever political party contesting for the control of the City of Joburg has to make the right and acceptable noise about the provision of jobs, RDP houses and the reduction of unemployment.
The provision of these amenities dominated the battle for the City of Joburg debate between the local major parties of the ANC, DA and EFF which was held at Wits University’s Great Hall on Thursday night.
The debate was hosted by ENCA with the support of Independent Newspapers and Facebook. Instead of focusing on the cardinal points of their different manifestos, these party leaders, Geoff Makhubo of the ANC, Floyd Shivambu of the EFF and DA’s Joburg’s mayoral candidate Herman Mashaba traded insults and accusations.
The forerunner of these accusations began outside the Great Hall when different members of these political sang in groups – which was a clear show of force – but disappointingly sang derogatory songs about their individual opposition party’s leaders. Inside the hall, proceedings were nearly disrupted when members of the EFF and ANC sang while party leaders were delivering their speeches – luckily the organisers and the host Sinki Mgabadeli calmed the situation.
It was then that Mashaba fired the first salvo at the ANC accusing it of being responsible for “the increasing number of unemployment” in the city.
According to Mashaba – the City of Joburg has about 870 000 unemployed saying the majority of those people were the youth. He also said 750 people were losing their jobs on a daily basis. In a very ironic situation, the EFF appeared to agree with the sentiments of the DA that the “ANC was responsible for the loss of jobs.”
“Even before the economic decline in the country and the world. Unemployment in Joburg stood at 30 percent under the ANC government,” Shivambu said.
However, Makhubo – who is the incumbent member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for finance, disputed the allegations. Makhubo said the ANC under Mayor Parks Tau has attracted private companies like Massmart to help create jobs for young people in Joburg. He also said that the City through their Jozi@Work programme has managed provide job incentives to young people including providing them with stipends for doing urban development programmes.
“Development is not finite and the nature of the economy has changed,” Makhubo said.
While the EFF also accused the ANC of erecting bicycle lanes while “people in Diepsloot, Alexandra do not have houses” – Makhubo fought back and accused their former party members and one of the former senior members in the ANC Youth League - of theft.
The ANC Joburg finance boss said that the EFF claim to introduce ward based planning and budgeting as well as of high rise building to deal with the housing crisis “was stolen from ANC documents.”
But none of these parties – raised their individual plans on how they intend to increase the revenue of the City of Joburg. None of them appeared prepared to address various maladministration issues such as councillors doing business with the Municipality, irregular, unauthorised and wasteful and fruitless expenditures repeated pointed out by the office of the Auditor-General in their annual financial statements.
The audience too – seemed not interested in asking questions about the financial welfare of the City – if one of the parties emerges victorious. Most of their questions were not Joburg based. The DA and ANC members accused each of the latest chaotic events at Midvaal Local Municipality.
ANC members accused the DA controlled municipality of allocating jobs to “white people only” while the DA said the latest “destruction of property by Samwu members in Midvaal” was engineered by the ANC.
Political Bureau