WE ARE UNDER SIEGE, CITY OF TSHWANE RULED BY LAW-BREAKERS
By Tshepo Mahlangu
Chairperson of LASCA
This letter is a response to the fleet of vehicles purchased by the City of Tshwane for the Tshwane Ya Tima campaign.
First of all, I would like MMC for Corporate and Shared Services Kingsley Wakelin to answer the following questions:
1. Where did the cash-strapped City of Tshwane source money from to purchase fleet of vehicles for the notorious Tshwane Ya Tima campaign?
2. What happened to the fleet stuck in various City of Tshwane car workshops? Has the fleet been auctioned or abandoned?
3. Why is the city prioritising fleet for Tshwane Ya Tima campaign rather than salary increases for workers and also for paying service providers?
4.Why has the city claimed to be cash-strapped but has money to purchase fleet for Tshwane Ya Tima campaign?
The DA-led Coalition government is busy gloating over the messy Tshwane Ya Tima campaign that aims to punish indigent residents rather than serving them.
If the DA really governs well wherever it governs, then why does it use a different template of governance when it comes to townships?
Tshwane Ya Tima is not an option to resolve concerns of the residents of Tshwane and the City is deliberately ignoring the affordability assessment forms of indigent residents which I personally hand-delivered to the office of the now-expelled Divisional Head of Finance Ronny Shilenge in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Up to now none of the indigent residents have been assessed but they have instead each been fined R27 000 due to imposed erroneous and estimated historical debts.
We saw messages on Tik Tok social media wherein MMC for Finance Jacqui Uys announced that debts owed to the City of Tshwane by indigent residents would be scrapped in terms of the Affordability Assessment Programne, yet the Metro continues to persecute the self-same indigent residents via the Tshwane Ya Tima campaign.
How can a government grant recipient whose services have been disconnected afford to pay the R27 000 fine?
In the first place the disconnected grant recipient, who is obviously poor, doesn’t have access to TikTok yet that is the very platform which Uys decided to use to disseminate her false message regarding the writing off of debts owed by indigents.
The DA-led coalition, through the Mayoral Committee (Mayco), is deliberately withholding a report that is supposed to go to Council regarding 27 000 indigent residents but is busy passing motions on issues that serve their own agendas, an example here being leasing power stations, Wonderboom Airport and other Municipal assets to the private sector.
Is Mayco withholding the aforesaid report because it will expose 2 500 names of friends and families of Coalition government officials which were not supposed to be included in the indigent programme?
The withheld report is supposed to assist poor residents who are indebted to the City of Tshwane who are still waiting to be approved as indigents and have their debts scrapped.
The saddest part in this matter is that no political party, law-enforcement agencies or media publications hold Mayor Cilliers Brink’s administration accountable regarding malfeasance in the Metro’s indigent programme.
Indigent debtors who need assistance are instead held to account not in accordance with legislated frameworks.
The poor residents are made scapegoats of corruption and maladministration by the toxic DA-led coalition.
It is very sad that as residents of Tshwane we are under siege as law-breakers are law-makers in the capital city of South Africa.
They apply divide-and-rule tactics and enjoy breaking every clause of the Constitution.
We write emails to the Municipality, and these are not responded to, and we invite the municipality to community meetings, but they never attend, hence the advent of this mess called Tshwane Ya Tima.
The DA-led administration in the City of Tshwane is here to reintroduce racism and demonstrate power with the assistance of its coalition partners who benefit from the looting spree in the City of Tshwane Metro.
We call on all residents of Tshwane in the seven regions of the city to unite against these arrogant bullies who are also constitutional delinquents.