DA leader John Steenhuisen was in Cape Town on Tuesday night. (@ourda/X)
- DA leader John Steenhuisen took his Rescue South Africa tour to Cape Town on Tuesday.
- He said the Crown Prosecution Service will file charges with the Public Protector against ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa, who is suspected of using state resources to woo voters over the weekend.
- Find everything you need to know about the 2024 general election here. News24's election hub.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has threatened to report “manipulative” ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa to the public protector for allegedly using state resources in the run-up to May's general election.
Speaking in Cape Town on Tuesday night during the party's “Rescue South Africa” tour, Mr Steenhuisen said the Crown Prosecution Service would lodge a complaint with the Office of the Public Protector Kholeka Gkaleka.
However, he did not say when the party would take this step.
“At an ANC campaign event on Saturday, Mr Ramaphosa promised a crowd of 500,000 people skills training and employment opportunities in a scheme funded by taxpayers, not ANC funds.
“This also shows that the ANC in Gauteng has already used a job manipulation scam called Nasi Hispani, promising hundreds of thousands of jobs but actually using tax dollars to distribute positions to ANC executives. This is in response to this.”
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Mr Steenhuisen was referring to Mr Ramaphosa's comments during a campaign campaign in Gauteng over the weekend.
He said this was the ANC's latest “scam” to gain votes in the upcoming polls.
Steenhuisen added:
We call on the Public Protector to urgently investigate this misuse of taxpayer funds for the purpose of election manipulation. The time has come to hold the ANC accountable for deceiving this country. We cannot continue to lie to the people and make promises that we have no intention of keeping.
He told potential voters that the ANC was a group of “dishonest manipulators”.
“For 30 years, the ANC has been deceiving South Africans with promises they know they can never keep. They are manipulating us with promises of jobs.
“She was one of the thousands of unemployed graduates who went to university doing whatever they had to do on the weekends, but she couldn't find a job.
“And when you travel outside of the Western Cape and see our young people in gowns, it breaks my heart and I’m sure it breaks yours as well.
“They're sitting facing robots with certificates and begging for jobs. Is that right in a democracy? It's not.”
We must put the president out of work on May 29th.
“This ANC is manipulating us too. They are manipulating our youth with the promise of education, all the while [Higher Education Minister] Blade Nzimande's NSFAS and those fat cats are eating away students' money.
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“This same government is busy manipulating us about burden relief.
“The ANC knows it will lose the election in 41 days, so it is now trying a magic trick that will magically end load-shedding overnight,” Steenhuisen said.
He added that load shedding did not “magically disappear” overnight and would return “with a vengeance” on May 30.
“For the past five years, Cyril Ramaphosa has been manipulating us with empty promises to fight state capture and end corruption, but he is the same man who chaired the executive deployment committee during state capture.
“He's the guy who wants to send 90 of the state prisoner defendants back to Congress with him after the election.
“He's the biggest and most dishonest manipulator of them all.
“He made us believe in a new dawn, but we both knew that the new dawn would disappear like the morning mist and all that would be left was suffering, poverty, misery and hunger. I know.”
Mr Steenhuisen also accused Mr Ramaphosa of lying, accusing him of manipulating the criminal justice system by keeping former president Jacob Zuma out of prison.
He referred to Ramaphosa's decision to pardon Zuma in 2021, which reduced Zuma's 15-month sentence for contempt of court.
“To cover up Zuma's release, he released 16,000 criminals onto the streets of South Africa.
“President Ramaphosa came out on Sunday to say he had 'no regrets' for releasing the criminals who terrorized our communities.”
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Mr Steenhuisen said people were tired of being manipulated, adding: “We are going to end the mistreatment of South Africans.”
Mr Steenhuisen reiterated his comments from his visit to Johannesburg, adding that the ANC would continue to manipulate voters by “selling votes to the EFF”.
“The ANC realized it no longer had a chance of winning a majority.
“So they are now planning to sell out voters to the violent EFF of the Doomsday Coalition, which will plunge South Africa into chaos.
“Mr Julius Malema has already admitted that this is the plan. He told us that the ANC and EFF plan to form a doomsday coalition with Finance Minister Floyd Shivambu in place.”
Mr Steenhuisen said that if South Africans voted for the ANC, they were voting for the implementation of EFF policies.