Ground Zero for the Doomsday Coalition

The following speech was delivered by the Leader of the Democratic Alliance, John Steenhuisen, during his Rescue South Africa Tour in Springs, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng.

Fellow Democrats,

It is wonderful to be here in Ekurhuleni tonight.

This city, the place of peace, is home to wonderful people and has the potential to be the industrial heartland of South Africa.

The East Rand should be our country’s version of Detroit, Manchester or the Rhine Area.

In theory, Ekurhuleni is a globally connected city, with a major airport and located at the crossroads of major highways, railway lines and export routes.

Unfortunately, this city’s great potential has been squandered.

Instead of being known as South Africa’s industrial heartland, Ekurhuleni has become a symbol of something far more sinister.

Ekurhuleni today is ground zero for the Doomsday Coalition between the ANC and EFF, supported by sell-outs like the Patriotic Alliance.

Rather than an inspiring economic success story, Ekurhuleni is a cautionary tale of the future that awaits the whole South Africa if the ANC, the EFF and their partners take over the levers of power after the election on 29 May.

It is therefore all of our responsibility to look closely at the collapse of Ekurhuleni so that we may learn from it.

So that we can prevent the ANC/EFF Doomsday Coalition from doing to the whole of South Africa, what it has already done to Ekurhuleni.

Following the 2021 local government election, the DA’s Tania Campbell was elected mayor of Ekurhuleni in a multi-party minority government.

Despite the enormous obstacles posed by the fact that our government did not have a majority in council, Ekurhuleni started making progress.

When Mayor Campbell took office in November 2021, Ekurhuleni had already been so badly looted by the ANC that it only had enough cash in the bank to cover a total of seven days.

By bringing an end to corruption and focusing on stabilising the city’s finances, Ekurhuleni soon increased its cash reserves beyond the required thirty day mark to ensure the city would not run out of money.

During the tenure of our DA mayor, Ekurhuleni also achieved a clean audit and service delivery visibly improved.

But then came the Doomsday Coalition.

Less than a year after taking office, the ANC, EFF, Patriotic Alliance and a host of other mercenary small parties ganged up to remove the DA’s mayor Campbell and her team.

This was possible because, even in coalition with our partners in other parties, mayor Campbell did not have the majority of 50% plus one in council she needed to keep the Doomsday Coalition out.

As a result, in October 2022, Doomsday arrived in Ekurhuleni.

The ANC and EFF, as well as mercenaries in the Patriotic Alliance, Al Jama-ah, the AIC, IRASA, ICM, PAC, ATM, NFP, UDM and COPE joined forces to elect a puppet mayor from the AIC, even though this party only held three seats in the council.

Out of these twelve parties that voted in October 2022 to bring Doomsday to Ekurhuleni, seven have only one seat each in council.

In other words, it is thanks to the sell-outs in these small mercenary parties, that the ANC and EFF brought Doomsday to this city.

The looting and chaos started immediately.

Less than three months after the Doomsday Coalition took over, a whistle blower provided the DA with evidence of a R2 billion irregular security tender.

The matter is currently under investigation by the Public Protector and before the courts.

Shortly thereafter, the EFF’s MMC for finance in the city, Nkululeko Dunga, was involved in a car accident.

The subsequent investigation revealed that he was using a private vehicle owned by an alleged tenderpreneur.

The expensive V-class Mercedes Benz had been fitted with blue lights using public resources.

The owner of the car Dunga was in had also recently obtained lucrative tenders from the city to install air conditioners and procure protective equipment.

With the city’s finances in the hands of the EFF, the cash reserves painstakingly built up by the previous DA mayor evaporated, plunging Ekurhuleni into bankruptcy.

Due to the gross mismanagement of the EFF looters, the city also lost its clean audit during the very first year under the Doomsday Coalition.

The ANC and EFF have unleashed untold misery on the people of Ekurhuleni.

In Thembisa, where 99% of residents still pay their bills on time despite knowing that their money is being looted, uncollected refuse lines the streets.

The roads in Boksburg have been consumed by potholes and pose a danger to the lives of the people who use them, and the people of Boksburg recently also waited two weeks for a power outage to be restored.

Substations are no longer maintained and simply left to burn to the ground.

In Springs, and across the city, streets lights no longer work and entire neighbourhoods are plunged into the dark even outside of load shedding.

Even the mast lights on the highways have gone dark.

Why?

Because the ANC/EFF Doomsday Coalition, with help from their allies in mercenary small parties, are too incompetent and corrupt to even buy lightbulbs.

The same goes for parks and public spaces.

The looters in the ANC and EFF are not even able to mow the lawn in Ekurhuleni’s parks.

This is despite city workers begging the council to be given the tools they need to do their work.

But because of the feeding frenzy unleashed by the Doomsday Coalition, Ekurhuleni no longer even has lawnmowers or the most basic equipment required to maintain public spaces.

When a resident of this city attempts to report a complaint, they contact a call centre nominally staffed by 40 people.

However, between them, Ekurhuleni’s call centre operators are forced to share only 10 laptops that have only two chargers.

That’s right.

The call centre in this city of nearly four million people has only two laptop chargers, which means that each operator can only work three hours per day.

There is not a single aspect of life, or a single person in Ekurhuleni, that has been spared from the feeding frenzy unleashed by the Doomsday Coalition coming to power.

Like ravenous locusts descending onto a fertile field, they are wiping out the potential of this city in front of our eyes.

And this is the future that awaits the entire South Africa if DA voters stay at home on election day and allow mercenary parties outside the Multi-Party Charter to split the vote.

Our potential and our hopes will be devoured by the ANC and EFF.

So, what can we learn from Ekurhuleni’s tragic experience in order to defeat the Doomsday Coalition here, and to prevent it from doing to the whole South Africa what it is already doing to Ekurhuleni?

Number one: in this election, the single best way to prevent Doomsday for South Africa is to get out and vote to help the Multi-Party Charter achieve an outright majority of 50% plus one.

One of the key priorities of the 11 opposition parties inside the Multi-Party Charter is to defeat the ANC and keep the EFF out.

The DA is absolutely committed to the mission of getting the MPC over the 50% mark and to use our demonstrated track record of good governance to form the big, strong anchor at the heart of a new government.

With the MPC over 50%, there will be no way for the ANC and EFF to get into government.

Number two: beware of mercenary parties outside the MPC that will sell you out to the Doomsday Coalition.

In Ekurhuleni, parties like the Patriotic Alliance as well as a host of parties with just one seat each, gladly handed the keys to the city over to the ANC and EFF in exchange for patronage and favours.

If we allow them to, they will do exactly the same thing at national level.

In this election, if we want to keep the ANC and EFF out, we also need to keep mercenary small parties out.

Number three: if the Doomsday Coalition does come to power after this election, it will be a government where the tail wags the dog.

And if this nightmare comes true, South Africa will need the strongest DA it has ever seen.

In Ekurhuleni, the EFF has exploited the ANC’s desperation to hold onto power at all costs, to devastating effect.

This was true under the AIC puppet mayor, and it is even more true now under the new ANC mayor.

During the 2021 election, the EFF won only 13% of the vote in this city.

But it now controls 50% of the mayoral committee, including finance and all of the critical service delivery portfolios.

The EFF also controls the council through the Speaker position, and the committees through six chairman positions and as the chair of chairs.

The EFF played Panyaza Lesufi and the desperate ANC for fools here in Ekurhuleni.

And Lesufi gladly sold out ANC voters to the EFF.

This means that, here in Gauteng, a vote for the ANC is actually a vote for the violent and chaotic EFF.

To this day, the EFF’s Nkululeko Dunga controls the purse strings in this city even after he lied about the Auditor-General to try and cover up the fact that his mismanagement cost Ekurhuleni its clean audit.

If we allow the Doomsday Coalition to take over the whole South Africa, the EFF will do the same thing at national level.

Julius Malema has already told us that under an ANC/EFF coalition, Floyd Shivambu – who is notorious for his role in the looting of VBS Bank – will be the national minister of finance so that the EFF can loot the treasury just like it does here in Ekurhuleni.

But here’s the thing.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Help is on the way.

In this election, we can prevent the Doomsday Coalition from destroying the whole of South Africa.

Instead of a collapsing economy, we can get a new government anchored by the DA that will create millions of new jobs.

The difference between the Doomsday Coalition and the DA, is like the difference between night and day.

While the ANC and EFF loot places like Ekurhuleni and Gauteng into the ground, the DA has turned places like Cape Town and the Western Cape into South Africa’s job creation hub.

Just this past week, the national ANC government itself confirmed that this is true.

According to a report in Business Day, and I quote: “The study, which forms part of the department of higher education and training’s [work]…shows employment prospects are better in the Western Cape than the rest of the country, bolstering the DA’s argument the region is a job-creating hub.”

While people lose their jobs every day under the Doomsday Coalition, the DA-led Western Cape has created 79% of all net new jobs in the past year.

Just this one DA-led province created eight out of ten new jobs in the whole South Africa, while the eight provinces still controlled by the ANC created only two out of every ten.

Over the past year alone, 360 000 unemployed people in the Western Cape found work.

By electing the DA to anchor Gauteng’s next government on 29 May, we will do the same in Gauteng.

Life under a DA government here in Gauteng will be all about jobs, jobs, jobs!

And we will turn the East Rand into the industrial jobs powerhouse it is meant to be.

By tackling violent crime and fixing collapsing infrastructure, we will attract investment back to Ekurhuleni.

By embracing the private sector and doing away with job-killing policies like expropriation without compensation and the corruption of BEE and cadre deployment, we will ignite an economic boom right here in Gauteng.

But there’s more good news for the people of Ekurhuleni.

If you have elect the DA into both provincial and national government on 29 May, we will use the power of the Constitution to free this city from the grips of the ANC and EFF once and for all.

In national government, the DA will not hesitate to place municipalities like Ekurhuleni, that have been destroyed by looters, under administration.

We will use administration to second the very same skilled officials and experts who turned the Western Cape into a success story, to come to Ekurhuleni and save this municipality.

And if the ANC and EFF try to stop us, we will dissolve this council and hold fresh election to vote the Doomsday looters out!

People of Ekurhuleni: the moment to rescue South Africa has arrived.

There is only one way to rescue Ekurhuleni, Gauteng and South Africa.

There is only one way to keep Doomsday out.

And that is for voters to come out in their millions to vote for the DA!

On the 29th of May, a vote for the DA is a win-win-win.

A vote for the DA is a vote to help the Multi-Party Charter succeed, with a big, strong party with a proven track record of job creation, as its anchor.

A vote for the DA is a vote to prevent the same ANC/EFF Doomsday Coalition that has done so much damage to Ekurhuleni from destroying South Africa.

And a vote for the DA is a vote for a party that will never, ever sell you out to the EFF, like the desperate ANC is already doing in Ekurhuleni and planning to do nationally after the election.

My fellow South Africans, the time has come to unite behind the DA to rescue South Africa!

We can do it.

We must do it.

And, together, we will do it!

Thank you.