Insults and recriminations hurled between Nkomazi politicians
A delegation of Democratic Alliance (DA) members visited the office of Corridor Gazette on Friday last week, to complain about ANC members arranging meetings in the Stentor area and then insisting that their DA membership cards should be handed over to be burnt.
MALALANE – Residents of the area alleged that a garden worker at the clinic in Malalane, Mr Sipho Ndlovu, was a friend of a councillor and told them during such a meeting held on April 9, that their DA membership cards were going to be destroyed.
They also told Corridor Gazette that Ndlovu had told meeting attendees that the DA councillor, Ms Mariette Preddy was a criminal and a thief and that they should not vote for her party.
When the ANC councillor for the ward, Ward 30, Cllr Catherine Shisane Mkhumbane, was contacted for comment, she said that the DA called meetings in the trust area in the guise of the Nkomazi Local Municipality.
According to Mkhumbane, the residents assumed the meeting was about service delivery and “small houses”, and signed a register of attendance.
This, she said, the DA used as proof that these attendees were now members of the DA, which is claimed they never wanted to be. According to them, they did not have sufficient information to make an informed decision.
Preddy said it was a mystery why members would claim that they had been tricked into becoming DA members, as they paid R10 up front per membership card to members who wear conspicuous DA T-shirts.
Members of the group that visited the newspaper offices, said people were now afraid that should the councillor ask them for their membership cards on a one-to-one basis, they would have no alternative but to give it to her.
Farm workers are targeted ahead of the forthcoming elections and Preddy voiced her concern that communities in rural areas would now, out of fear, rather vote ANC than be threatened in any way.
She also made it clear that she would lay a charge of crimen injuria against those who told the people of Stentor that she was a criminal.
Residents of Stentor also said that after the article about badly built RDP houses in the village had been published in Corridor Gazette, ANC members arrived in DA T-shirts and asked inhabitants to show them the houses of which photos appeared in the paper. The delegation asked not to be named for fear of retribution.
