Dear Editor
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will hold a watching brief in the Durban High Court, in the seminal case brought by TOYOTA South Africa’s Japanese insurer, for the enormous financial losses they suffered due to infrastructure failures of various government and state role-players in 2022.
The DA sees this as potentially precedent-setting, enforcing financial responsibility for the cost to residents and businesses when failing ANC-led governments neglect infrastructure.
Too many ANC-led local and Provincial governments across South Africa have been governed to the point of failure, through corruption, personal enrichment, maladministration and financial misconduct, enabled by bloated cadre-filled administrations, leaving residents with crumbling infrastructure. And to date the only channels of accountability for this have been inter-governmental interventions, or through the power of the ballot box every 5 years.
But the opportunity for a legal precedent that could hold wrongdoers legal and financially accountable for their misgovernance, or malfeasance, when failures result in financial losses to residents or businesses, may open a new chapter of accountability.
We trust that the implicated role-players in KwaZulu-Natal will see the importance of this seminal matter, as we do.
Regards
Helen Zille
DA Federal Council Chairperson