PRETORIA - The ANC in Tshwane on Thursday said the current uncertainty over the future of Mayor Stevens Mokgalapa is distressing residents and crippling service delivery.
Addressing a media briefing ANC Tshwane regional chairperson, Kgosi Maepa, said the DA must come clean and clarify Mokgalapa's future, particularly in the wake of EFF leader Julius Malema suggesting that Mokgalapa was "a caretaker Mayor".
"Today Councillor Steven 'Gimmicks' Mokgalapa will deliver a budget speech to the people of Tshwane. What we would like to ask is whether he is delivering his last speech before taking off to Cape Town [Parliament]? That is the question," said Maepa at the briefing at Tshwane House.
"We have learnt and noted that he still remains number 79 on the Democratic Alliance's gazetted national list to Parliament, and the DA has not gone public to clarify the confusion.
"Now we are having somebody 'double dipping', having to be here as the executive mayor [and at Parliament]. Perhaps the other opposition parties were correct to say he's just a caretaker mayor.
Video: ANA.
"But how do you have a caretaker mayor who has put himself all over the city using billboards and everything else wasting the city's money?
"The DA and their coalition partners the EFF seem to be playing Russian Roulette with the lives of the people of Tshwane with deepening uncertainty on what is going to happen over the next few weeks in the leadership corridors."
Maepa said Tshwane "has suffered immensely under the poor leadership provided by the corrupt and inept DA" since it took over the reins in 2016 with the EFF's backing.
"The city has since been plunged into a quagmire of moribund existence with service delivery dwindling to its lowest ebb ever," said Mokgalapa.
"The DA needs to restore some semblance of order by coming out to clarify their position on the utterances by the EFF's so called CIC, Julius Malema about Steven 'Gimmicks' Mokgalapa being a caretaker mayor.
"Again we ask, is Mokgalapa staying or is he leaving the city?"
Earlier this month, Malema told journalists that his party would initiate talks with the DA, in a bid to take control of the City of Tshwane.
Malema said through the existing informal relationship between the EFF and the DA which enabled the Mmusi Maimane led party to rule metros including Johannesburg and Tshwane, the EFF should now take over the Tshwane reins.
Mokgalapa was elected at a special Tshwane council meeting in February. The mayoral chair was left vacant by Solly Msimanga at the end of January.
Msimanga resigned from the Tshwane top post, saying he wanted to focus on his ongoing campaign to become Gauteng premier - a bid which failed in the May 8 general elections.