Africa-Press – South-Africa. DA spokesperson Willie Aucamp says the party is open to working with the ANC to help its municipalities improve.
This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa told ANC councillors this week not to shy away from learning how DA-led municipalities are doing things differently and incorporating those practices into their respective municipalities.
“I can name them here; there’s nothing wrong with competition,” Ramaphosa said. “They are often DA-controlled municipalities. We need to ask ourselves what it is they are doing that is better than what we are doing. There’s nothing wrong with us saying we want to see what Cape Town and Stellenbosch are doing.”
In an interview with the SABC, Aucamp said the DA would answer any call to improve the lives of South Africans.
“The DA is not here to serve itself; we are here to serve South Africa,” he said. “If we can make a contribution in any municipality where the ANC governs, we will most certainly do so. From the DA side, we will gladly join hands with anybody to improve service delivery for everybody in South Africa.”
Aucamp made a comparison between the DA-led municipality of Midvaal, which is considered one of the best-run municipalities in South Africa, achieving clean audits, and its neighbouring Emfuleni municipality, led by the ANC, which is considered one of the worst municipalities because of poor service delivery and financial mismanagement.
“You can see the difference between day and night. The difference is that with one municipality, Midvaal, where the DA governs, you’ve got the political will to give service delivery and to make that municipality succeed and to root out corruption.
“Whereas right next door, you have the same number of people, the same size of municipality, the same demographics, but you’ve got a municipality that failed because the ANC is not delivering there.”
He said when South Africans want to buy property, they ask themselves whether they want to do so in an ANC-led “bad” municipality or a DA-led “good” municipality.
“Ramaphosa confirmed what many DA voters, as well as previous ANC voters, know, and that is that the DA governs better. If you look at the municipalities all over South Africa, as the president said, where the DA governs, we get clean audits, service delivery is on the order of the day, and people live better lives.”
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