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The Brink Campaign of the DA in Tshwane stooped to new lows this weekend when it stood on the ground of dead residents of Hammanskraal, to unveil a billboard about water tankers in a community where residents died of cholera in 2023 because of the tender awarded by the DA government to Edwin Sodi. 

In 2023, 31 residents of Hammanskraal died of cholera arising from the long-standing water crisis that affected the area for nearly 18 years resulting from the long-term failures of ANC and DA governments to upgrade the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment Plant. 

In 2019, under a DA government, the City of Tshwane awarded a R296 million tender to Edwin Sodi despite the venture having no experience in wastewater plant upgrades, insufficient liquidity to set up the site and having to be irregularly advanced funds to procure equipment. Numerous bodies, including the Auditor General, have formally found against the City for the mismanagement of this project, citing it for the delay in ending the long-standing Hammanskraal Water Crisis. 

It is worth noting that ActionSA ran its own independent Commission of Inquiry, chaired by an independent human rights lawyer, which the DA-run City of Tshwane refused to participate in. Later, when ActionSA was elected to council and entered into coalition with the DA, our efforts to initiate investigations were thwarted by the DA, which opposed the investigations and later, when that failed, delayed the publication of its findings. 

The fact that, under these circumstances, the DA would campaign on the graves of the residents their governance failures killed, speaks only to the shamelessness of Brink and the DA and how little they respect the lives of poor black South Africans. It is worth noting that the biggest and most significant victory in resolving the Hammanskraal Water Crisis was achieved not by the 10 years of ANC government under which it began, or the 8 years of DA government under which it worsened, but the 20 months of ActionSA Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya who poured the first clean glass of water in the community and drank from it in 2025.

The shamelessness of the DA goes further in continuing to pushing the lie that R777 million was spend on water tankers in the City of Tshwane. It has already been proven that R180 million of this figure comprised of unpaid invoices from the previous financial year (under Brink’s mayoralty) that could not be paid because Brink had bankrupted the City of Tshwane to the point it could not pay service providers. 

With this correction, the spend on water tankers under Moya was lower than the spending under Brink but clearly the mantra of the Brink campaign is to never let the facts get in the way of a political cheap shot. 

Again, it is worth noting that water tanker spend has been slashed by 79% in the current budget following Dr Nasiphi Moya’s directive for the city to procure its own water tankers – something that could not be accomplished by Brink or any of his accomplices in the destruction of our capital city. 

The DA lacks the ability to read the room for residents of Hammanskraal who view them as the party whose failures killed their neighbours, friends and family, and who have so little regard for the intelligence of poor black residents in Tshwane that they would add insult to injury by attempting to campaign on this issue.

Issued by ActionSA National chairperson Michael Beaumont