Johannesburg – DA mayoral candidates on Tuesday challenged the ANC to announce its own candidates and start debates ahead of the local government elections.
“The voters deserve to know who the ANC’s mayoral candidates are and who in the ANC will take responsibility for fixing the mess they have left our cities in,” DA mayoral candidate in the Nelson Mandela Bay Athol Trollip said in Johannesburg.
The ANC’s delay in the “battleground metros” for the August 3 elections meant voters had not yet had the opportunity to interrogate the party’s options, Trollip said at a joint press briefing by the DA’s mayoral candidates for Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, and Johannesburg.
Trollip said only DA mayoral candidates have been on the ground since the ANC launched its manifesto 46 days ago.
“We challenge Gwede Mantashe to commit ANC candidates to a series of public debates with us,” he told journalists.
The ANC had wasted almost R20bn in unauthorised irregular and wasteful expenditure in the country's major metros, the DA said.
DA mayoral candidate in Tshwane, Solly Msimanga, announced a 15-point plan to turn around the Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni municipalities’ finances.
It included an immediate ban on municipal office bearers and their families doing business with the metros, and the introduction of customer satisfaction surveys.
Speaking at an ANC press briefing earlier on Tuesday, Mantashe said they would release the names of their mayoral candidates in the next two weeks.