How misinformation is impacting Tshwane's governance under ActionSA

The advent of ActionSA’s Dr Nasiphi Moya’s mayoralty in Tshwane was never going to receive fair treatment from a scorned DA and Cilliers Brink. This much ActionSA knew when it removed Cilliers Brink to stop and reverse the collapse of our capital city.

However, the DA’s ambulance-chasing campaign of deliberate misinformation that has followed has exceeded all expectations in its willingness to trade in lies, fear and panic in its bid to defend the DA’s myth of good governance after eight years of misgoverning Tshwane.

And on this point, if you have regard for facts and rational thinking over the politics of identity, there is no debating that the DA broke our capital city. No deflection can refute the truth that Tshwane was governed by the DA from 2016 to 2024 and that this represents a time period sufficient for any governing party to make its mark.

In these eight years the DA took a poorly run capital city and ran it even worse. Unqualified audits under the ANC regressed to adverse audit findings against the City. The City went from owing Eskom nothing in 2020 to owing Eskom R6.7 billion in 2024 – R5 billion of which accumulated in just 16 months under Brink.

The capital budget of the City regressed to approximately R2.5 billion per annum when eThekwini was budgeting R7 billion and Cape Town almost R13 billion. Service delivery declined, causing infrastructure renewal to all but halt, leading to unstable services for those who lived in places with formal services, and no prospect of services for those less fortunate.

When one reflects on this record, the desperation of the DA to throw mud at anything it can in Tshwane to deflect from its disastrous record makes sense. After all, the party has presented itself as the party of good government, and its regression of Tshwane stands capable of destroying that myth.

To weigh the desperation of these attempts to discredit the progress of Dr Nasiphi Moya’s coalition government, consider the following examples.

Brink and the DA have come out firing about Tshwane abiding by a decision of the South African Local Government Bargaining Council to back-pay municipal workers R1.6 billion, claiming that Tshwane Mayor, Dr Nasiphi Moya, is operating in a financially irresponsible manner.

What is absent in this campaign is the truth that this R1.6 billion is a contingent liability that ballooned because of the refusal of DA governments to pay a R459 million, 3.5% (sub-inflation) salary increase in 2021 that was negotiated with the unions and binding in law. Who could forget the Margaret Thatcher-esque images of Brink fighting the unions while they were on strike on this issue, against the wishes of his coalition, at the behest of his party wanting to campaign to the anti-union sentiments of its base.

While Dr Nasiphi Moya must now add this legacy of Brink’s misgovernance to the long list she is having to fix, Brink campaigns on the crisis that he and his party created, despite the fact that it will cost Tshwane residents five times more than the Nkandla scandal.

When cases of Typhoid were being diagnosed in Tshwane, Brink and the DA wasted no time in stoking fears of an unprecedented health crisis allegedly caused by regression in water quality. Brink even went as far as shaming Moya for being out of the country on an investment drive in a bid to create the image of a leaderless government (a contradiction of his frequent efforts to brand Moya as being controlled by her coalition partners). What has since been shown by the NICD is that a seasonal Typhoid outbreak takes place every year, and has for many years, and that the City’s response was well coordinated with the province to manage the outbreak.

In his desperation for an “I-told-you-so” moment, it sometimes feels like no one is more eager to see Tshwane fail than Cilliers Brink. During the water crisis, you got the sense he was almost disappointed when the Typhoid rumours turned out to be false. When the CSIR released its findings that the outbreak did not arise from the City’s water supply, Brink and the DA were nowhere to be found, having moved on to the next ambulance to chase.

Who could forget the video footage Brink shared of hundreds of residents of Soshanguve chasing after a fleeing water tanker to create the idea of a crisis in basic service delivery. It did not take long before social media proved that the video was an old one, from Brink’s tenure as mayor, and it backfired spectacularly. Needless to say, no apology or retraction followed.

Water-tanker-gate was the next illusion conjured up by Brink and the DA to deflect from the backfire of the video. In an effort to brand Dr Moya’s government as corrupt, aided and abetted by aligned media interests, Brink presented an eye-watering figure of over R777 million spent on water tankers in the current financial year. What emerged thereafter was the fact that R179 million of this amount was unpaid invoices from the Brink government dating back to 2023/24 (that didn’t pay suppliers because they couldn’t afford to).

The awkwardness only increased when it was revealed that a further R98 million was incurred in the first quarter while Brink was still mayor. At the end of the day, when expenditure was correctly allocated, Moya’s government had spent R80 million less than Brink’s had, but Brink and the DA had moved on to the next manufactured outrage event.

In October Brink launched a campaign claiming that the end was nigh in terms of the City’s finances, citing revenue collection levels having dropped to 87%. Videos and public appearances spoke of wage bills that would go unpaid and projects being cancelled because of a lack of funds. At the end of the same month, Tshwane collected R4 billion (the most of any month in its history) courtesy of a sustained programme of credit-managing properties in arrears and illegal connections. Immune to embarrassment by this point, Brink and the DA simply slithered to the next opportunity to self-humiliate.

A strong opposition is vital and accountability must be welcomed, but accountability is not a one-way street. Brink and the DA are clearly insecure about their track record in government being revealed in high definition by a strong and capable leader like Moya. The tide is turning and people are seeing through the antics and gimmicks and the boy-crying-wolf routine three times a day. Now all they see is a failed former mayor and his party using the politics of lies, fear and hatred to tarnish the leadership of someone who is delivering what he and they could not.

* Michael Beaumont, ActionSA National Chairperson.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.