MOSHOESHOE MONARE AND ANNA COX
If it’s any consolation – or hope – for the residents of Joburg, President Jacob Zuma has promised to intervene and sort out the billing crisis. But he didn’t say how.
It is the first time a high-ranking ANC official admits to the long-standing problems in the city’s billing system after the outgoing mayor, Amos Masondo, initially denied there was a crisis.
But, in an exclusive interview with The Star yesterday, Zuma said: “we cannot continue with this.
“People are wrongly billed and you don’t solve the problem… That’s one of the things in Johannesburg we are going to deal with immediately after the elections, to see how far that process has gone. We cannot allow it,” he said.
He said that if the billing crisis continued unabated, “we will intervene very decisively”.
But Dilas Hansjee, of Fordsburg, is sceptical, especially ahead of the May 18 elections.
He has been slapped with a bill of R314 206 for a single flat and two shops, dating back to June 2009.
“I usually pay between R5 000 and R6 000 a month. I have had no statements since June, so I have been paying an estimate of about R8 000 so that I don’t get cut off.
“Zuma’s promises are probably election promises. I have been waiting since 2009 to get this resolved,” Hansjee said.
Zuma admitted that the billing crisis created the impression that the DA-controlled Cape Town was run better than the ANC-run Joburg.
While Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe admitted last week that Cape Town was out of reach for the ANC, Zuma said yesterday that the party stood a chance of snatching the mother city from the DA.
Motlanthe’s spokesman, Thabo Masebe, said yesterday that his principal’s comments were meant to motivate ANC members to work harder to win the city.
Zuma was optimistic about winning Cape Town, and the ANC was “pulling out all stops in that city”, he said.
He repeated several other ANC leaders’ comments that the DA’s service delivery in Cape Town was discriminatory.
“I don’t think it is correct that the DA has run the Western Cape better… People were on protest (against) funny toilets… You are in Mitchells Plain, you are in Gugulethu, you are in a different world… You are in Rondebosch, you are in another world,” Zuma said.
The DA’s Cape Town mayoral candidate, Patricia de Lille, said yesterday that the party’s objective was “to win the City of Cape Town with an outright majority” and that the city’s service delivery track record “has been supported by various independent sources”.
Idasa’s Judith February said a great deal of damage was done by the ANC’s factionalism in the Western Cape.
“The DA has worked hard to consolidate the coloured working class and suburban Cape Town vote. Despite Cape Town’s changing demographics and the botched service delivery in the ‘toilet saga’… it remains highly unlikely that the ANC will win Cape Town… although putting Tony Ehrenreich up as a mayoral candidate means the DA cannot take anything for granted,” she said.
Zuma admitted that some ANC members did not accept the party’s “community-driven” list process to choose councillor candidates, but played down the issue.
Recently there have been protests by ANC members who claimed that the party was imposing candidates on them.
Others have registered as independent candidates.