Malema lambastes Ekurhuleni ANC for response regarding 'missing trucks'

EFF leader Julius Malema has slammed the ANC for denying that there were waste trucks missing in Ekurhuleni.

The EFF MMCs in the council last week highlighted challenges they had uncovered in the city, including:

• the nonpayment of service providers;
• the city’s low conditional grants allocation; and
• “missing waste trucks”.

In response, ANC Ekurhuleni caucus chairperson Jongizizwe Dlabathi said all parties in the collaborative governance arrangement had to preserve the integrity of the institution, while tackling service delivery deficiencies.

Dlabathi spoke about what he termed factual inaccuracies concerning the “false” allegations of lost trucks, saying these were detrimental to the image of the city and its administration.

“The ANC in the municipality was puzzled by some of the statements made around the waste department, in particular the false narrative that some trucks might have been stolen — council approved Item A-F 16-2023, wherein 53 trucks were recommended for write-off, while 28 we were undergoing repairs,” he said.

However, in a media briefing on Monday, Malema did not take kindly to this rebuttal and accused the ANC of being reactionary.

“Our MMCs went in there and found incomplete trucks and announced that they are going to open a case. The immediate (last) government that left office is the DA. So you would expect the DA to be the first ones to be suspects, because they would have seen that the trucks are missing,” said Malema.

Much to the EFF's surprise, it was the ANC that sought to clarify these claims, Malema said.

“Typically the ANC was the first one to jump and say that there are no trucks missing. As Africans we have more than one name, the ANC has two names — ANC and corruption. When you utter the word corruption, you are calling them. That’s why they responded.”

Malema said his party did not understand how the ANC decided to get involved.

“We were shocked ... where do they come in? They are not the immediate government. We were trying to demonstrate that the saying that ‘where the DA governs, they govern better’ is not true as the trucks went missing under the DA,” said Malema.

He said instead of the ANC joining the efforts to uncover the mystery behind the alleged missing trucks, they acted differently. “But the corrupt ones respond and deny that there are trucks missing, instead of joining the EFF in uncovering the issue of the missing trucks.

“The people using those trucks are black Africans in the township, without those trucks our people don’t get services delivered to them. We cannot allow that.”

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