The DA’s new billboard on Stormvoël Road in the north of Pretoria. (Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
The DA in Gauteng unveiled a billboard in the north of Pretoria on Tuesday that mocks Prime Minister Panyaza Lesufi’s recent comment that he also struggles with water cuts – to the extent that he sometimes has to take a bath in a hotel.
The DA says the party’s new billboard on Stormvoël Road shows how ridiculously out of touch the ANC’s leaders are with the plight of South Africans.
“They think they are important after being in power for more than 30 years,” Helen Zille, the DA’s mayoral candidate in Johannesburg, said on Tuesday at the unveiling of the billboard.
“They think they are superior to anyone else.”
The DA’s new billboard on Stormvoël Road in the north of Pretoria. (Photo: DA/X)
This is why Zille believes that the ANC will lose its majority in every municipality in Gauteng after this year’s municipal elections.
“Why? Because the ANC’s leadership is completely out of touch with the people,” she insisted. “Lesufi is out of touch with reality.
“How many of us live within walking distance of a hotel? Certainly not me. And even if we did, could we afford to shower in the hotel every day? Never! So, for him the water shortage means nothing. He simply showers in a hotel as in the representation (on the billboard).
“They say power doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are. And power has revealed who the ANC’s leaders are.
“May we never lose touch with the people,” was Zille’s message to members of the DA at the unveiling of the billboard.
Helen Zille (Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
Cilliers Brink, the DA’s mayoral candidate in Tshwane, for his part said that a billboard along a busy Stormvoël Road often tells what is happening on the ground – “the reality of politics”.
“The most important thing we have to do in an election year is to transform our pain as South Africans into politics. We have to do this because that is exactly what one does in a democracy.
“You turn the pain of ordinary people into the pain of political leaders who are responsible for the situation.”
Brink then pointed out that the City of Tshwane’s spending on water tankers in areas that should have water in their taps rose from less than R200 million to more than R1 billion in the year in which the DA and its coalition partners were removed from Tshwane.
Brink then pointed out that water losses rose from 32% to 40% over the same period as a result of leaking pipes and broken valves.
Cilliers Brink (Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
“The choice of this political leadership is therefore to give people water – not in their taps, but in tankers,” said Brink.
“People have to pay for water, while they should have water in their taps. You can count every ten vehicles in Hammanskraal – vehicle number 9 will be a water tanker. This is the reality of the matter,” added Brink.
He did emphasize that the DA and its coalition partners in Tshwane devised a solution to the Hammanskraal water crisis during their time in power. “Hundreds of millions were invested in the construction of a plant on the Pienaars River. However, that project has now been stopped while the bill for water tankers at the expense of taxpayers has skyrocketed.
“The ANC is making this country weak. It is making our people weak. The people are being abused by their own ward councillors,” argued Brink.
“It’s time for us to take back our water, take back our city and turn our pain into political change,” he said.
Cilliers Brink (Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
(Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
Helen Zille (Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
(Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)
(Photo: Christine Oelofse/Maroela Media)