ANC power battle havoc

Ballito (Ward six) councillor Tammy Colley writes:

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in KZN is appalled at the current power battle playing itself out in the KwaDukuza municipality which has resulted in the municipality ‘shutting down’ due to the municipality’s executive committee and full council meeting being called off for the month of June.

It is not right that the entire KwaDukuza municipality has been shut down by warring ANC factions in the region which threatens the very financial viability of the municipality. This will impact service delivery from business licence applications to basic services.

Because of factions within the ANC, the executive committee did not sit last week, and worse, an important meeting to discuss capital projects in the electrical department was been canceled.

This after the municipality returned R18 million to National Treasury for its failure to spend this money to resolve outstanding electrical connections to poor communities as well as fix the 600 broken street lights.

The auditor general yesterday (Sunday) expressed his opinion that political interference at the local government level is why so many municipalities have adverse findings in their audit outcomes and KwaDukuza is proving him to be entirely correct.

Further to this cancellation of Exco and council meetings, we have been informed that future council meetings are postponed indefinitely leading to a state of paralysis in the municipality.

The DA will not allow service delivery to the residents of KwaDukuza to be held to ransom to ANC factionalism.

That is why the DA won a resounding victory in the recently held Ward 22 by-election where the DA increased its support to 94,7% because residents now believe that a DA centred coalition government is possible in 2021.