The Democratic Alliance (DA) has launched an urgent interdict, to halt the R10 billion politically facilitated agreement between the City of Johannesburg, and SAMWU.
English soundbite by Helen Zille
The passing of the adjustment budget by the Johannesburg City Council last week highlighted the catastrophic risk to the City’s financial viability of the ANC’s political agreement with SAMWU.
The agreement commits the city to paying SAMWU members more than R10 billion. This is more than the City’s entire annual budget for building new infrastructure to improve service delivery.
This agreement between the ANC (and its coalition partners) with SAMWU is correctly called a “politically facilitated agreement” because its purpose is entirely political. It is, once again the ANC using ratepayers’ money to buy SAMWU’s support for the forthcoming election.
Put another way, it is the ANC using public money to bribe SAMWU to support and campaign for the ANC in this election.
In reaching this agreement, the ANC ignored the law, and the City’s dire financial circumstances, to buy political support.
This is illegal.
That is why we are seeking an urgent interdict to prevent the further looting of the City’s water and electricity budgets to fund the ANC’s election strategy.
This is a matter of the gravest public importance because if implemented, it will have devastating financial consequences for the City.
We believe this agreement bypassed proper council processes and was made without proper authority.
Johannesburg is already in an extreme financial crisis, which is why both the President and the Minister of Finance singled out Johannesburg as an example of a failing government. If this agreement is not stopped, it will be the final nail in Joburg’s coffin.
The adjustment budget demonstrates the impact of this politically facilitated agreement. In the budget the first tranche of R1.4 billion would be paid under this agreement. That almost exactly equaled the cuts to the budgets of City Power, Joburg Water and Pikitup.
While many residents are without power, without water and have uncollected garbage piled up outside their homes, the ANC finds R1.4 billion for an election strategy.