DA wants to take over Johannesburg

The Democratic Alliance is making a bid to take over South Africa's most powerful city, Johannesburg, and they reckon they can do a better job than the current ANC administration.

“We say this is a world class city, we have to provide world class services,” said Democratic Alliance (DA) mayoral candidate, Mmusi Maimane.

As part of its election campaign, the party today launched its manifesto for Johannesburg. They outlined their envisaged transformation and rehabilitation of the city’s image. Priority issues would be reducing poverty, job creation and the delivery of basic services.

Citing the current power outage in some parts of the city, Maimane said: “All of it is about maintenance. There is a need for preventative measures to be put in place within the municipality, there is no effective forecasting.”

Regarding the ongoing billing crisis and the incorrect logging of complaints, Maimane said the root of the problem was that information was not being translated into the system correctly.

“Call centre staff training is inadequate. In any billing system, there’ll always be mistakes but good monitoring control will increase efficiency,” he said.

The DA also stressed the importance of good relations between the city council and the business fraternity.

“Power going out in the middle of Johannesburg is unattractive to investors,” said DA spokesperson Lindiwe Mazibuko.

She said that the government needed to create an environment that would attract investors.

Maimane said: “Investment is based on predictability. If the electricity goes out, a business will not be able to function effectively. If the robots are dead, deliveries will not be made on time, this increases costs. On a macro-level, investor confidence decreases.”

He said there was a need for accountability within municipalities and the monitoring and evaluation of performance contracts. Officials deemed to be inefficient should be removed, he said.