‘No one is above the law’ — DA Ekurhuleni candidate outlines five key promises

The Democratic Alliance has continued its campaign efforts in Gauteng ahead of the upcoming local government elections with the launch of its election pledges from Ekurhuleni mayoral candidate Khathu Rasilingwane.

She spoke to a full audience of blue-clad supporters at the Impala Park Community Hall in Boksburg on 10 June, vowing to focus on crushing corruption, improving service delivery and attracting investors.

Like Helen Zille in Johannesburg, Rasilingwane is gunning for an outright majority in the metro to avoid what the party has termed another “coalition of chaos”. The ANC currently governs the City in a coalition after winning 38% in the 2021 elections. The DA came second with 28%, followed by the EFF with 13%.

At 36, Rasilingwane is one of the party’s younger mayoral candidates. Since her candidacy was announced on 20 March, she has remained highly visible. She recently laid criminal charges against former Ekurhuleni city manager Imogen Mashazi and the company that allegedly bankrolled her trip to London, XET Solutions, following reports linking them to tender-related irregularities in the City.

So naturally, corruption formed a significant part of her address, with Rasilingwane promising to take a hard line on corrupt officials.

“Every rand that gets stolen, there is a victim. Every rand that is stolen, it is a road in Kempton Park that is not repaired, it is the water pipe in Tembisa that is left leaking, it is the housing project for Tembisa that is left abandoned. Every stolen rand has a human face,” she said.

Rasilingwane vowed that if elected, she would conduct lifestyle and skills audits of senior management, fast-track disciplinary processes to fire officials who break the law, blacklist corrupt corporations from obtaining tenders, and address the queue-jumping that has worsened the RDP housing backlog.

“The current environment in Ekurhuleni is one that lacks accountability. This environment has given officials the feeling that they are immune to the rule of law. And we are coming as the Democratic Alliance to say no one will be above the rule of law of our country,” she said.

Providing basic services

Her next area of focus was basic services, particularly water and electricity. Ekurhuleni has suffered crises in both areas, driven by maintenance underspending, weak revenue collections and ageing infrastructure. The metro also suffers from non-revenue water losses of 28% and electricity losses of 16%, driven by illegal connections.

Rasilingwane said that up to 40% of the businesses she had visited indicated they would leave the city because of the lack of basic services. She placed the blame squarely on the ruling party, saying the ANC had failed to prioritise maintenance spending and infrastructure expansion to keep pace with the city’s growing population.

“So this is where we will be coming as the Democratic Alliance to ensure that there is budgeting to make sure that we are able to deal with infrastructure, water infrastructure, so that it can be able to accommodate the 4.2 million [people who] are now residents of Ekurhuleni,” she said.

“So we are going to prioritise maintenance, but we’re also going to prioritise that we budget for that infrastructure.”

She vowed to address the billing system to ensure it was fair and accurate, ringfence revenues for services to ensure they are spent on infrastructure maintenance, improve refuse collections, fix broken streetlights and fill potholes.

Tough on crime

She promised to tackle crime by rooting out corruption within the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Police Department (EMPD), aiming to rebuild community trust after deputy chief Julius Mkhwanazi’s suspension over misconduct allegations at the Madlanga Commission. To enforce accountability, her plan introduces body cameras and rigorous vetting for all officers.

She also proposes providing officers with equipment, vehicles and ammunition, and strengthening coordination with neighbourhood watch associations.

“We understand that local knowledge is essential in knowing where local hotspots are, so we will ensure that we work with the neighbourhood watch and community policing forums to strengthen the arm of the law in our city,” she said.

The semigration push

This focus on clean governance forms part of a broader DA strategy. The party has made a concerted effort to prioritise winning Gauteng’s metros with outright majorities in the local government elections scheduled for 4 November.

The Ekurhuleni event was spearheaded by party head and mayor of Cape Town, Geordin Hill-Lewis, who continued the DA’s tradition of comparing Gauteng’s metros with the Mother City. According to Hill-Lewis, Cape Town is evidence that where the DA governs, services work and corruption is rooted out.

Hill-Lewis sees the fates of the two metros as intertwined. Cape Town’s escalating housing prices have led to Capetonians being priced out of the market there, a crisis compounded by the growth of short-term rentals.

“The biggest reason for the huge growth in property prices in Cape Town is actually Gautengers coming to Cape Town in their many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands actually,” said Hill-Lewis.

“And they are buying ordinary middle-class homes in neighbourhoods, and that’s what’s driving the price up so much. So we’ve got to reverse that.

“We’ve got to say, ‘Here, things work. You can stay here; you can have a productive life here, you can have a hopeful life here.’ Then there is no pressure,” he said.

According to a 2022 survey by Statistics South Africa, the lion’s share of internal migrants are attracted to Gauteng. The agency recorded 9.1 million lifetime migrants who had crossed provincial boundaries, with Gauteng attracting 4.55 million people, followed by the Western Cape with 1.53 million. DM