DA zooms in on rural safety in bid to woo Tshwane voters
DA leader, John Steenhuisen has asked residents to give his party a majority in the capital and thus avoid another coalition government.
The DA has set its sights on Tshwane in the build-up to the local government election on 1 November.
DA leader, John Steenhuisen has asked residents to give his party a majority in the capital and thus avoid another coalition government.
In a bid to woo local voters, Steenhusie is focussing on rural safety.
"The DA has long called for the establishment of dedicated rural safety units to protect farms and smallholdings from criminal attack," he says.
"Today...we ask the voters of Tshwane to give us a 50% plus one majority so that we can establish just such a unit inside the Tshwane Metropolitan Police Department (TMPD)."
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Sttenshuisen said that although categorised as a metropolitan municipality, Tshwane incorporates vast rural areas from Kameeldrift in the northeast, to Winterveld in the northwest, and Bronkhorstpruit in the west.
"Tshwane’s responsibility for this vast rural periphery is, in part, the result of an ill-conceived merger between the city and the former local municipalities of Nokeng Tsa Taemane and Kungwini in 2011," he says.
"This has left Tshwane with many financial and governance challenges, but one of the most pressing is the need to safeguard the rural communities within Tshwane’s borders," according to Steenhuisen.
"We welcome the pledge by the Mayor of Tshwane, Alderman Randall Williams, to establish a TMPD Rural Safety Unit if the DA has the chance to continue the work we started five years ago of turning the city around. This pledge forms part of the DA manifesto for Tshwane, and although we will fight to implement that manifesto, we stand our best chance of succeeding if 50% plus one of the people of Tshwane vote for the DA."