By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa has condemned the utterances made by the City of Johannesburg executive mayor during a service delivery meeting with residents in Tshepisong, West of Johannesburg.
Dada Morero was addressing residents when an elderly member of the audience called him a criminal.
Morero objected. Strongly.
“Don’t call me a criminal. Don’t call me a criminal. I’m not a criminal,” he said.
Then the mayor’s response strayed from what one would expect during normal municipal stakeholder engagement when he repeated, three times:
“Don’t call me a criminal. Don’t call me a criminal. I’m not a criminal,” he said.
The incident occurred on Thursday at the Abundant Faith Christian Centre during a meeting led by the city’s power utility, City Power.
The imbizo was held amid concerns raised by residents and local councillors following the initial withdrawal of electricity services in the area.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of an election campaign in Tshepisong, Ramaphosa called Morero’s conduct unacceptable.
“Our mayor has made utterances which we find completely unacceptable, but he has apologised. He’s gone public and apologised and we, as the ANC, have taken him up on that. “
Ramaphosa denied that his campaign trail amounted to damage control following Morero’s use of foul language against the resident.
“And I do also hope that our people will accept the apology that he has given. It has not been damage control. Our people here did not even raise the issue. Not a single one raised the issue.”
The president also promised to resolve persistent local electricity cuts and municipal service failures.
He pointed to damaged transformers caused by illegal connections and localized load reduction as key drivers of the ongoing outages at the municipal level.
Ramaphosa continues with the door to door campaign trail in Ward 1 community in Zone 1, Orange Farm in Gauteng.
Morero is one of three candidates for the ANC’s Joburg mayoral position – the others being Deputy Mayor Loyiso Masuku and veteran Reverend Frank Chikane.
Meanwhile COSATU President Zingiswa Losi said the federation will debate the election rift between it’s alliance partners, ANC and SACP, at it’s congress next month.
The trade union federation held its Central Executive Committee meeting ahead of its 15th National Congress next month.
The COSATU congress is tasked with electing a new leadership and coming up with resolutions on political developments that affect workers.
Losi said the alliance partners, the ANC and SACP, going into the local government elections separately must not serve to divide workers.
“COSATU must be thorough first the unity of the workers must be sacrosanct, the unity of affiliates is important, so every union has a responsibility to canvass this discussion within itself and the unions, and we’ve set ourselves a path that takes us to the 15th national congress where this discussion will be on the congress debate floor, said Losi.”