By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has announced its plan to call for the fresh elections in Johannesburg and the dissolution of the city council.
This could be the party’s attempt to test whether the multiparty charter coalition could succeed in snatching Gauteng away from the ANC in next year’s general elections.
DA Gauteng chairperson Fred Nel said the party would be filing an amendment for the vote to be postponed to the second of November, which will mean two years have lapsed since the council was formed.
Nel said after a two-year period had passed, it was legally permissible to submit a motion to dissolve council and have new elections within 90 days.
“The reason that the DA proposes this drastic step is that the instability and the mess in Johannesburg can only be resolved by going back to the voters to get a fresh mandate in order to elect a government that will promote stable government in Johannesburg. We call on other parties to support this amendment to the motion.”
Meanwhile the party on Sunday accused former president Thabo Mbeki of having “amnesia” after he said government wasn’t to blame for load shedding.
He said the load shedding crisis in South Africa was deliberately created and blamed managers of the country’s power stations.
The former president said the “false” narrative for the cause of rotational power cuts was that government hadn’t listened when told to invest in new generation capacity and infrastructure.
That story was cooked up. The reason there was a shutdown is because the people in charge of the power stations didn’t do what they supposed to do which was to replenish coal,” Mbeki said.
DA MP Ghaleb Cachalia said Mbeki’s claim “borders on propaganda and outright lies”.
Cachalia accused Mbeki of trying to absolve himself and the ANC from any responsibility for the country’s electricity crisis.
He said Mbeki admitted in 2007 that the government made a mistake by not investing in electricity generation.
“Mbeki must inform us what has changed from this position that has warranted his sudden turn to absolve himself of any responsibility,” said Cachalia.
The DA MP also said a white paper from the Department of Minerals and Energy in 1998 warned that “Eskom” present generation capacity surplus will be fully utilised by about 2007. Timely steps will have to be taken to ensure that demand does not exceed available supply capacity…”.
“This repudiates all the lies that Mbeki is now trying to drip feed the country in the vain hope that it would help the ANC escape culpability over what was essentially a gross dereliction of duty by his administration,” said Cachalia.