'ANC hypocrisy breathtaking'

2006-03-12 17:51

Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance insisted on Sunday that its candidate for mayor of Cape Town, Helen Zille, should get the top job in the hung metropolitan council.

The African National Congress has insisted that Zille not be mayor.

According to media reports, Zille's position was compromised during horse-trading with other political parties.

"The DA's public candidate for mayor was Helen Zille. The voters thus knew exactly who they were voting for when they voted DA," said DA spokesperson Ryan Coetzee.

"The ANC, by contrast, has still not made its candidate public.

"To complain about the DA's candidate under these circumstances amounts to breathtaking, shameless hypocrisy."

The SABC reported that the ANC's Western Cape leaders would look to the party's national working committee - due to meet in Johannesburg on Monday - for guidance on negotiating with other parties in the metro council.

DA sends invite to other parties

The ANC's Western Cape provincial secretary Mcebisi Skwatsha said: "We shall be finalising everything tomorrow," and would not comment further.

The DA won 90 seats, the ANC 81 seats and the Independent Democrats (ID) 23 seats. Smaller parties won the remaining 16 seats.

The DA invited parties on Sunday that may join it in a coalition to govern Cape Town to contribute to its draft plan to guide its first 100 days in office.

Service delivery, transparency and accountability are the main focus of the draft.

The DA said it would "professionalise" the city organisation.

"In one city department, the number of engineers has been reduced by 90% and the technical expertise built up over many years has been decimated.

"We have also lost 17 essential senior planners. We must rebuild that delivery capacity as quickly as possible, and bring some of it back if necessary.

"We need improved project management capacity, so that we do not end the year with only 60% of the capital budget spent, as has happened for the past three years."

It pointed out that inadequate attention paid to the fire service has been highlighted dramatically in the past few months and that Cape Town's economic infrastructure had suffered under-investment the past three years.

The draft added that urgent attention was required to provide an adequate electricity supply as was investment in the bulk-water system, sewage treatment works and trunk roads.

On housing, the funding crisis over the N1 Gateway project needed to be resolved, so that contractors could be paid, and more houses built.

On transparency and accountability, the DA called for a forensic investigation into questionable contracts and appointments, followed by decisive action.

Nepotism in DA sights

"We propose the establishment of a Scopa (standing committee on public accounts), chaired by a member of a non-government party, that will be able to interrogate city departments' expenditure.

It said the Scopa would review meetings of tender award committees that would be opened to the public.

The DA said it would deal with the nepotism and bloated expenditure in the executive suites, "and turn the misspent money towards employing people at the city's workface: firemen, policemen, engineers, librarians, street-sweepers, parks maintenance workers, nurses and health inspectors".

- SAPA