The establishment of a ministerial task team to investigate claims Cape Town authorities are cutting water supplies in some poor areas of the city is "another unlawful political witch-hunt",
Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille said on Friday.

"Why is a national minister targeting a municipality which is a model of good governance and efficiency in comparison with most African National Congress (ANC)-run local authorities? And why now?" she asked in her weekly newsletter on the DA website.

Cooperative Governance Minister Sicelo Shiceka announced the appointment of the team last month.

Zille, who is also Western Cape Premier, said that neither the city nor the province would cooperate with the task team, the establishment of which she likened to the Erasmus Commission.

The commission was set up by former provincial premier Ebrahim Rasool to investigate allegations of spying by the DA on Cape Town councillors.

Zille said it was a "strange synchronicity that in the very week that we closed the final chapter of the Erasmus Commission, I received a letter from Minister Shiceka requesting me to report to the newly established ministerial task team".

"This is another unlawful political witch-hunt, make no mistake.

"Like the Erasmus Commission, it involves the abuse of State resources by the ANC for the purpose of smearing a DA-led government in the run-up to an election.

"Like the Erasmus Commission, it reveals the ANC's underlying intolerance of democracy when it loses an election, and its willingness to ride roughshod over the Constitution to achieve its political objectives."

Her party had refused to testify at the Erasmus Commission because it would have given credence to a process designed to impugn a DA-led administration for political purposes.

"Lies and distortions would have been presented in the press daily as if they were fact.

"The ANC are masters of the Goebbels school of propaganda: if you repeat a lie often enough, some people may begin to believe it.

"It is for this reason that neither the city nor the province will take part in the open session in Parliament arranged by the task team."

According to legal advice the DA had received, the task team was unlawful because it disregarded the principles of cooperative governance set out in the Constitution.

"I have today written to Minister Shiceka requesting that we meet to resolve the matter, as envisaged in the Intergovernmental
Relations Act.

"I hope that we can avoid an intergovernmental dispute. But, if necessary, I am willing to fight this power abuse all the way to the Constitutional Court," she vowed.