Durban - DA leader Mmusi Maimane has told ANC members in Wentworth not to cry about a lack of service delivery while continuing to support the ruling party.
Maimane was in Durban to campaign for the local government elections.
In Wentworth he was confronted by a group of ANC supporters living at the rundown Ark shelter. They accused his predecessor, Helen Zille, of failing to honour her promise to demolish the shelter and build a block of flats fit for human habitation.
Maimane and his entourage also visited Clare Estate where they braved flies, the stench of dirty water and garbage during their walk through the congested L Section informal settlement.
When the DA leader arrived in Wentworth, ANC and DA members hurled insults at one another. ANC supporters taunted the DA members, saying they were not allowed to come into the shelter to campaign. But Maimane went into the Ark anyway to carry out his inspection.
The ANC supporters said they had left the DA as Zille failed to honour her promise, which she had made “many years ago”.
ANC member Stacey Lucas became emotional as she told Maimane how Zille had failed to improve their living conditions “as she had promised”.
However, as he addressed DA supporters, Maimane told Lucas, who was standing with other ANC supporters, that her crying was justified “because she had been failed”.
“The lady there (inside the shelter) who was crying has every right to cry, because it is not right that people must live with the rats,” he said.
However, he condemned Lucas for crying about a lack of service delivery while still wearing an ANC T-shirt.
“You can’t cry and wear an ANC shirt. If you want to cry, cry at the ballot box and say the ANC must go because this is no longer Nelson Mandela’s ANC. It is now the African national corruption,” said Maimane.
Lucas and other dwellers said they had started occupying the shelter about 10 years ago. They had left their homes because their parents’ houses were too small to accommodate them.
“We left the DA yesterday to join the ANC after (human settlement) MEC Ravi Pillay came here to promise that the shelter would be demolished in nine months. He said this could even be done in six months,” said Denzel Usher.
The walls of the shelter had developed cracks, and residents said they were bothered by rats.
DA provincial leader Zwakele Mncwango said people at the shelter were suffering because of the ANC-led eThekwini Municipality’s failure to listen to the Ward 68 DA councillor.
“Our councillor Aubrey Snyman is working very hard to bring these issues to council but this council is under the ANC, the party that is so concerned about internal fighting rather than the community,” said Mncwango.
Maimane told the residents of L Section informal settlement in Clare Estate that they were not enjoying freedom like their counterparts across in Westville. There were a few ANC supporters standing nearby, separated from the DA supporters by police.
He said the party would provide a house for the family of Nandipha Sceshe, who said she shared a shack with 13 grandchildren and seven children of her own. On hearing Maimane’s promise, one of Sceshe’s daughter wept.
“These children remind me of my own children,” Maimane said.
He also told the media the DA would make sure corruption charges against President Jacob Zuma were reinstated.
Maimane said the fact that the ANC had failed to fill up the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Port Elizabeth was a sign that Eastern Cape people were rejecting Zuma because of corruption.
The Mercury