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DA, EFF have 'radically different ideas' - Mazzone

The Democratic Alliance has strongly ruled out any form of coalition with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) after the general elections in May.

Speaking to News24 in Limpopo on Saturday, the deputy chairperson of the DA's federal executive, Natasha Mazzone, said the EFF has now adopted ideas that were radically different from her own party.

Mazzone was in the rural town of Makhado for the provincial launch of the party's manifesto. The event was also punctuated by heavy criticism of the ruling ANC, described by several speakers as "corrupt".

The party had enjoyed what was termed a "voting agreement" with the EFF, which saw the ousting of the ANC as the majority party in the Tshwane and Johannesburg metros.

READ: We will have EFF mayor in Tshwane after elections - Malema

However, the "agreement" in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in the Eastern Cape fell apart and the DA’s Atholl Trollip was ousted as mayor.

In January, EFF leader Julius Malema said his party supported coalition governments because "they are the best system to hold all parties accountable".

He said whoever the EFF partnered with had to agree with the party's position on land ownership, as "the land question is non-negotiable" in his organisation.

"The EFF has radically different ideas from DA. We are not in any coalition with the EFF anywhere in the country.

"You cannot enter into a coalition with someone who has fundamental different principles with yours. But we will look at the elections and wait and see what the results look like," Mazzone said on Saturday.

However, on Tuesday, the DA's candidate for premier of Gauteng, Solly Msimanga, told Radio 702 the party couldn't rule out a coalition with the EFF in Gauteng, Eyewitness News reported.

Addressing a packed local rugby stadium, DA provincial leader Jacques Smalle said Limpopo was "the corruption capital of South Africa".

"Not only did we see over R15bn in unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure but this ANC government was also responsible for the VBS scandal

"As a result of the VBS scandal 22 000 customers many of them elderly and poor lost their life savings and can no longer buy groceries and take care of themselves," Smalle told the crowd gathered at Die Lapa Rugby Club.

He also spoke of the lack of infrastructure, such as the collapsed R3bn Giyani Water Project which has since left more than 50 villages without clean drinking water.

"Worst of all is that it resulted in the loss of an innocent life when 6-year-old Nseko Mhlongo drowned in one of the manholes of the incomplete Giyani Water Project," Smalle said.

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