ANC and DA clash over informal settlements in Tshwane

ANC caucus spokesperson in Tshwane, Joel Masilela says he is sticking to his guns that the former DA-led administration should be held accountable for the proliferation of informal settlements during their term after the 2016 municipal elections.

He was reacting to DA caucus chief whip Ofentse Madzebatela's dismissal of his recent claims as false.

According to City of Tshwane Mayor Nasiphi Moya’s recent statement, the number of informal settlements in the municipality has risen from 220 in 2019 to over 500.

Madzebatela said between 2014 and 2019, the EFF, now an ANC coalition partner in Tshwane, implemented a deliberate land invasion programme.

He implied that the ANC was complicit in the EFF's actions, as some ANC councillors actively led and encouraged the illegal land occupations to undermine the previous administration.

“These actions, not DA policies, fuelled the spread of informal settlements,” he said.

Masilela said in response that the DA should be held accountable for the land invasion during their term, regardless of which party allegedly instigated it.

“The people who had the powers to endorse or to reject what the EFF was doing were supposed to have been the DA. By implication during the DA tenure shacks mushroomed and it reversed literally everything that the ANC has sought to achieve in redefining the lives of ordinary people that they do not leave in squalor,” he said.

He said the ANC aimed to challenge apartheid-era spatial planning by bringing economic development closer to people.

“When people invaded the municipal land during their tenure they did nothing to remove them. There is a reason why they didn’t do anything; it was on the basis that the EFF threatened them that if you remove people from the informal settlements we are not going to vote for you. So they preferred authority over doing the right thing,” he said.

He claimed that the DA's actions have led to over R1 billion in unaccounted-for water and electricity in the city.

Madzebatela said: “The DA in Tshwane is shocked by the desperate antics and political propaganda of the ANC in a ploy to garner voter empathy amid their continued service delivery failures. The ANC-ActionSA-EFF coalition in the City of Tshwane has bitten off far more than they can chew. With no better way to deflect attention from their inadequacies, they blame their predecessors.”

He attributed Tshwane's vulnerability to land invasions to the ANC's inability to secure national and provincial land, combined with historically weak border management.

“The city cannot enforce by-laws on land it does not own, yet we have proposed practical steps: transferring unsecured land to municipalities or securing it with proper measures,” he said.

He said that during the DA's tenure, they promoted the Informal Settlement Management Policy, now open for public input, which proposes systematic solutions, including protected land zones in areas such as Atteridgeville, Ga-Rankuwa, and eastern Tshwane, prone to land targeting.

“The DA fights for real change while the ANC spreads propaganda. Our policy offers clear, enforceable ways to manage land invasions and protect Tshwane’s future. After 31 years of democracy, it is no surprise that South Africans’ lives have not improved—they talk, we act,” Madzebatela said.

Masilela said he won’t back down on his recent comment that “the DA has failed to govern the city.”

rapula.moatshe@inl.co.za