EKURHULENI City’s 2015 State of the City Address was not without a silent protest from the DA.
During part of mayor Mondli Gundubele’s speech, the opposition party silently held up placards depicting colourful images of the deteriorating infrastructure of the city.
According to the party’s spokesman, Angela Barnes, the protest was meant to highlight the importance of ensuring that the basics of the city should be in order first before focusing on the bigger projects.
“While the DA welcomes the massive projects planned for the metro, it is imperative that the city gets back to basics first by focusing on the smaller scale infrastructure first. Smaller issues such as the city’s potholes and abandoned and illegal buildings in its towns should be addressed and sorted out first before moving onto the bigger projects,” Barnes said.
DA caucus leader, Fortune Mahano, said the opposition party felt the mayor’s address was the same as previous ones, where he continued to make the same promises he made in previous SOCA announcements.
“For example, if you go to townships, you’ll find sewage running down the streets and we feel that big promises will not help in addressing these basic needs,” Mahano said.
“That is why you’ll find civil protests taking place in Ekurhuleni and residents were burning a clinic in Tembisa. Therefore, through this silent protest, we as the DA were highlighting those frustrations of the community.”
Barnes used the Lungile Matshali Project as an example of the metro’s “failure” to plan properly and due to this, hundreds of millions of rands have gone to waste.
This R101 million ward based project was aimed at creating more than 3 000 jobs and fighting poverty in Ekurhuleni. Each of the 101 wards in the city was meant to receive R1 million for the community to spend towards developmental projects of their choice. The projects would be centred around energy efficiency; water and sanitation; wetlands rehabilitation and waste management, greening and landscaping.
“What was supposed to be a great legacy for the city has now turned into over R300 million of money wasted over three years. So the protest really was about focusing on the basics and proper planning by the metro.”
