Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance (DA) created the water crisis in Cape Town to manipulate tender processes so that they could award a R6 billion contract to the Israeli government, a National Freedom Party (NFP) MP claimed in Parliament on Thursday.
The NFP's Ahmed Shaik Emam, who introduced a debate in the National Assembly on the country's water crisis, said: “They wanted to create a crisis so that they can give that tender and they can take it away and get that money they need for the 2019 elections, that’s what it is."
He added that the City of Cape Town had plenty of water, "now let them tell you about the license to SABmiller, privatising the water and what their plans are with Coca Cola, who takes 500 million litres of water”.
Cape Town faced a potentially doomsday scenario of taps running dry, with Day Zero initially set for early April, but then gradually being pushed back as residents heeded calls to lower consumption. DA leader Mmusi Maimane, whose party controls the City of Cape Town metro, on Wednesday announced that with continued consumption and decent winter rains, Day Zero should be avoided in 2018.
National government should urgently intervene into the City of Cape Town’s “corrupt provincial government”, said Shaik Emam.
“We are saying, as National Freedom Party, that national government needs to intervene into this corrupt Democratic Alliance in the Western Cape, corporate governance needs to intervene, MEC needs to intervene and dissolve this infighting between Patricia de Lille who they want to fight because they have been exposed.”
He further accused the DA-led municipal government of taking part in the apartheid government’s attempts to ensure water was always available to the wealthy.
“The water in this country belongs to the people of this country, so if that corrupt leader, (Western Cape Premier) Helen Zille believes there’s a spring in her property, it does not belong to her. Like they have stolen the land, they have stolen the water, so all the water belongs to its people.”