Johannesburg - The City of Johannesburg incurred at least R13.8 million in wasteful expenditure by promoting the African National Congress (ANC) in advertising disguised as regular ads for the city, the Democratic Alliance claimed on Monday.
The party’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Herman Mashaba, said the city started spending on advertising platforms such as newspapers and billboards immediately after the date for the August 3 local government elections was announced.
Read: DA's Mashaba versus ANC's Tau in Joburg
“This amount was spent in April and May this year. If there was any doubt about this, the advertising has risen dramatically in the run up to the elections,” said Mashaba.
He said the city, led by mayor Parks Tau, was shedding jobs while the amount could have been used to create jobs.
The advertisements, which was often accompanied by a photo of Tau as ANC mayor, were not linked to any important public matters, said Mashaba.
“Indeed 65 percent of this amount was spent on promoting city officials. R4.7 million was spent on advertising the state of the city address, R.3.2 million on the budget speech and R1.1 million was spent to advertise the recent Moody’s rating.”
“Tau claims to run a clean administration, yet he has overseen gross mismanagement of public money.”
African News Agency