Seeisoville - Municipalities run by the ANC did not deliver basic services to people, and when this resulted in protests, police shot and killed people, DA parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko has said.
She was speaking to a crowd of supporters in Seeisoville outside Kroonstad in the Free State.
“There’s a water crisis in the Free State which is enveloping the whole of South Africa… because of poor municipal management,” Mazibuko said.
Last year DA Free State leader Patricia Kopane alleged that at least 26 towns had no water at all in certain areas, and water supply disruptions, or extremely unhygienic water coming from their taps.
At the time she said the water problems towns were experiencing were mainly being caused through water treatment plants and pipes that were dilapidated while some dams are completely dry.
Mazibuko said the poor state of water treatment plants and pipes was because contracts were given to “people who were friends with the ANC not people who could deliver”.
Earlier DA leader Helen Zille led a march of several hundred through the dusty streets of Seeisoville.
The party hopes to make considerable gains in the province, with staff members saying the official opposition hoped to gain between 25 and 30 percent of the provincial vote in the Free State.
A staff member said the DA got 12 percent in 2009.
Kopane joined Zille in the march.
“We are not going to stop fighting the ANC, which is corrupt,” Kopane said.
“We really do have a chance to make history on the 7th of May. Because we are tired of corruption, of broken promises (and) of the lies the ANC is telling,” Mazibuko said.
“We are fighting corruption, not only in Parliament, in the Western Cape but also here in the Free State.”
“It’s time to make a change. It’s time to tell the people of SA to that the ANC of today is not the ANC of yesterday. They don’t care about the people anymore – they only care about their leaders.”
Political Bureau