Tamara Mahanjane, former COPE youth secretary and the current Gauteng leader, writes:

Dear Gwede,

I noted with great dismay how arrogant you have become since you maneuvered your way to holding the most senior, strategic and crucial position in the ANC. From the communist that you ought to be, signs of having changed to a capitalist are clearly visible.

Your sarcastic response coupled with great arrogance to Thuli Madonsela’ s report is something that I, the citizen of SA cannot leave unchallenged. You posed questions and I believe you want answers from someone. We, the SA citizens also have questions that we would like your government to answer. As much as the man you try so hard to defend, the man who feeds you, the man who puts food on your table, the man who secured a great future for your children, family and loved ones, never asked for security upgrades, you may want to recall that, we too, never asked for e-tolls.

These are the questions I am posing to you:

• Did South Africans ask for e-tolls?

• Did South Africans ask for those gantries erected on our roads?

• Did South Africans ask this government to make a R20 billion loan for those e-tolls?

• Who did?

• If Jacob Zuma never asked for security upgrades, who asked for e-tolls?

• Did we ask for additional lanes on our “freeways”?

If Jacob Zuma ought not to pay for the security upgrades, which he “never asked for”, the swimming pools, the bulletproof windows, the sportsground for his children, the tuckshop, how then do you expect South Africans to pay for e-tolls which they never asked for? Zuma, unlike us, at least had an opportunity of hiring his own architect and taxpayers paid this architect R20 million, we never had the same opportunity to hire our own.