Note to the Editors: See the attached document outlining all the corruption activities and broken promises made by the ANC government Gauteng for the past 30 years of democracy.
Gauteng residents have minimal cause for celebration this Freedom Day, given the need to contemplate the harsh realities of unkept promises and corruption during the ANC’s 30-year governance.
Key broken promises:
Growing the economy and reducing unemployment:
In the 2023 State of the Province Address, Premier Panyaza Lesufi promised to speed up the payment of invoices to service providers. Yet, the Auditor General’s report shows that 26,293 invoices for R2.5 billion were undisputed but not paid after 30 days or an agreed period. This shows that Lesufi’s assurance of prompt payments to service providers has not been met by the Gauteng Provincial Government departments.
In 2023, Premier Lesufi pledged to provide R500 million for the establishment and running of spaza shops by South Africans. To date, it has been hard to find a South African-owned spaza shop. The question is, where did the money go?
Despite many promises made by Premier Panyaza Lesufi that there are concrete plans in place to curb the unemployment rate in the province, his interventions, like the Nasi Ispani programme, are not working. This is worsened by load-shedding, which negatively impacts job opportunities for small businesses, particularly those operating in townships. Furthermore, this current government has failed to create a conducive environment to attract investors to invest in this province.
Fighting crime
In 2023, Lesufi made grand promises to make crime an apex priority through a five-year Gauteng Policing Plan and increasing resources to police stations. Between October and December last year, more than 1 700 people were murdered in Gauteng. Furthermore, Gauteng only has 143 police stations responsible for the safety of more than 16 million people. Some police stations close at night and are badly maintained, understaffed, and under resourced.
Infrastructure development
Premier Lesufi has continued where his predecessor left off, promising massive housing developments that his administration is incapable of completing, making them vulnerable to vandalism and hijackings by the so-called construction mafias. The less said about the provincial housing backlog, which stands at more than 1.2 million, the better.
Access to quality education:
During his time as the MEC of Education in July 2022, Premier Lesufi promised that the process of applying to schools online would be glitch-free and hassle-free. However, the department fell short of achieving a 100% admission rate in 2023, leading parents and guardians to enrol their children in independent and private schools. Once again, this is classified as a broken promise. Recent oversight inspections in Gauteng schools show that asbestos structures remain, and overcrowding is a major issue.
Access to adequate health care services:
In the 2024 State of the Province Address (SOPA), the Gauteng Premier announced that the province would buy 18 private hospitals. This promise was not only absurd but also unfeasible. The pledge to digitise all patient files has been made as far back as 2008 when Premier Paul Mashatile was still at the helm. However, a recent visit to a Gauteng hospital like Tembisa shows that this promise has not been fulfilled, and there seems to be no hope of it ever being fulfilled.
Access to dignified housing:
For the longest time, the ANC government has been committing to revamping hostels and changing them into family-oriented residences. The commitment has also been repeated by Premier Lesufi in all his State of the Province speeches. To date, Gauteng hostel residents continue to live in squalor. Lesufi has recently shifted the responsibility for upgrading hostels to municipalities.
Key Combatting corruption cases in Gauteng:
The historical evidence of corruption within the ANC provincial administration is unmistakable. From Humphrey Memezi’s use of a state credit card to buy Big Macs at McDonald’s, to former Gauteng Speaker Lindiwe Maseko hiring her daughter to cater a legislature event, to ex-Health MEC Brian Hlongwa being involved in kickback schemes, and the more recent Life Esidimeni and PPE scandals.
The recent scandal involving Deputy President, Paul Mashatile shows how the tentacles of rot and corruption stretch up and down the hierarchy of the ANC. During Mashatile’s tenure as the MEC for Human Settlements, his department paid R134 million to a company owned by ANC donor Edwin Sodi for a housing project in Diepsloot that did not deliver a single house. This was one part of a total of R828 million that was paid to Sodi by the department for various supposed projects. This is in addition to millions of Rands in loans granted by the Gauteng provincial government to a company owned by Nceba Nonkwelo, Mashatile’s son-in-law. In turn, proceeds were funnelled to another company that owns an R37 million mansion in Waterfall Estate, where Mashatile had been living.
This is the legacy of ANC provincial governance, which now preaches “less talk, more work,” even though empirical data supports the contrary. This is a legacy that has crushed the hopes and dreams of those who stood in lines to vote for their freedom in 1994.
However, this legacy of failure, incompetence and corruption can be ended by our votes. On the 29th of May we can choose to create a new legacy to bring true freedom and rescue Gauteng. The DA is ready to rescue Gauteng from 30 years of corruption. See the attached DA’s solutions here.