DEAR Editor,-
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has, in KwaZulu-Natal, earned a rather fascinating reputation of being a party estranged from the truth.
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Its leading disciple in this fantastic realm of fake news is finance spokesperson Francois Rodgers. He deserves to be showered with accolades for singlehandedly earning the DA a title of being the leading exponent of ‘post-truth’ politics – relying on assertions that ‘feel’ true, but have no basis in fact.
This becomes clear when scrutinising the latest misleading diatribe by Rodgers entitled ‘MEC must explain municipal spend discrepancies’.
Apart from the malicious, scurrilous and reckless intention with which the article is written, it’s a very cheap political effort intended to create a salacious headline – hoping it will go viral in an instant.
The evil intention is to damage the image of Cogta and its executive authority, MEC Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
The DA’s obsession with Cogta is obvious: distract the public from the unravelling of the party as evidenced by the policy flip-flops on key strategic issues in the public discourse, including expropriation of land without compensation, being embroiled in maladministration in municipalities where it is a coalition partner, as well as internal chaos in eThekwini and Cape Town.
Therefore peddling disinformation about Cogta and its MEC in the vain hope of reviving its waning political fortunes and to galvanise support in the 2019 national and provincial elections.
The truth is there are no discrepancies in the spending of KZN municipalities. On the contrary, KZN has once again been named number one performer in SA on the spending of Municipal Infrastructure Grants (MIGs) allocated for infrastructure projects.
Not only are our municipalities delivering infrastructure at an unprecedented pace, they are also delivering basic services to communities to the point where KZN is within reach of universal access to water, electricity and sanitation.
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We can tell you that in KZN we have wards with 100 percent electrification and water provision sitting at a staggering 85 percent while, at the same time, we have no bucket sanitation in this province. Cogta has been voted ‘Best Performing Department’ at the latest Premier’s Excellence Awards.
It’s clear that Mr Rodgers conflates MIG expenditure, which Cogta performs oversight over with aplomb – as evidenced by above statistics with provincial transfers by departments to municipalities, which happens at a different level and is monitored by each line-function department. Clearly he is doing his constituency a disservice and may need a basic orientation on Finance 101.
Laying the blame for under-spending of provincial grants on Cogta MEC (other than MIG) is rich and exposes a shocking level of ignorance. We assure citizens that where grants have been under-spent, Cogta has strictly advocated for reprioritisation of those grants and consequence management for those responsible.
In KZN, any under-expenditure or over-expenditure is frowned upon.
This is why KZN Government was recently voted best performing province, always working on the ground and leading in public and community involvement in whatever it does in a media survey.
The DA is living in a parallel universe by claiming otherwise. Not surprising coming from a party that consistently opposes every progressive policy championed by this government at every level. Luckily we have a progressive government that will again come out victorious in 2019 on the strength of its service delivery record, to which KZN municipalities contribute significantly.
His deliberate distortion of facts may earn him a moment of fame, but he must remember that people are much more sophisticated than that and can distinguish between electioneering propaganda and facts. Lies always have short legs, Honourable Rodgers!
LENNOX MABASO
KZN COGTA Head of Communications
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