KwaDukuza Municipal Mayor, Lindile Nhaca writes:
KwaDukuza Residents Forum (KDRF) is quintessential to a political organisation due to its inflated and extreme view of political reality.
It has been interesting to see how different political parties have reacted to the frivolous Motion of No Confidence proposed by Action South Africa (ActionSA) in its bid to oust African National Congress (ANC) office bearers in KwaDukuza Municipality.
It has become more interesting and stranger to learn how a local ratepayers association, named KDRF has simply jumped the political band wagon by launching a campaign to remove the ANC from power.
I wonder if the KDRF executive was given a reasonable political mandate by its members who support and vote for different political parties including the ANC.
This week we saw KDFR undergo a serious metamorphosis, from being an apolitical ratepayers association that we had owed respect into a branch of a political party that is hell-bent on removing a government that was elected by the people.
Social media was turned into a breeding ground for the said campaign to oust the Speaker of Council, Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Whip of council. KDRF simply took up the space of political parties and confirmed the suspicions that they are a pseudo ratepayers association.
We have been observing their conducted and tone of their engagement with the leadership of KwaDukuza Municipality.
Action SA would loose debates in council only to later receive the same issues being raised by KDRF at my office.
It is not strange that most executive members of KDRF contested elections under the banner of ActionSA and lost.
KDFR has been economical with the truth, adding to its failure to communicate the correct message to its members. Truly it has become a hired gun of ActionSA.
Its members have easily slipped into an echo chamber that reinforces extreme political views which comes in more from a contrarian disposition than moral conviction of KDFR followers.
This coupled with outlandish ideas that we have never seen from any ratepayers association in the past, or at least that we have worked.
Its members should be wary of the toxic approach of the organisation that has all along branded itself as a ratepayers association only to learn that it is lap dog of ActionSA.
Evidence of KDRF being a close proxy of ActionSA can be traced in their recent deployment of a Proportional Representative (PR) Councillor (Cllr), Stephne Ashworth who replaced Cllr Gerard de Billot in KwaDukuza Municipality.
The reason for a civil society group to divert its focus away from central issues affecting its constituency or its previously determined plan, in this case ratepayers, is certainly something that should have its followers worried about.
He has been successful in using its members as cannon fodder in battle between the ruling party and the opposition by growing his influence of antipathy towards the ANC that matches that of ActionSA.
One of the lessons from such experience is that the purpose of KDFR is mala fide, with a strong intention of abusing its followers to join the ActionSA for so long as the KDRF leadership contests the elections.
KDRF has been sidetracked by fads and trends in the political arena and has lost the plot amidst the disagreements between the DA and ActionSA after the DA opted out of the negotiation table on the eleventh hour.
The political posture that has been taken by KDRF at intimidating and bullying opposition parties to support the frivolous Motion of No Confidence proposed by ActionSA has relinquished its position of being treated as a ratepayer’s association.
I am more than convinced that KDRF is a political wing of ActionSA rather an apolitical ratepayer’s association and should be treated in that manner that accords the status of a political party.
We want to urge executive members of KDFR to stop living in the shadows, stop the manipulation and allow political parties to execute their political work. Cut the rhetoric!
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