‘Black people suffering’: Mbalula fires broadside at DA over Cape Town

ANC secretary general Fikile Mbalula has blasted the DA for failing to provide adequate housing for the residents of Cape Town especially in black communities.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has accused the DA of failing black residents in Cape Town, warning that the same problems could spread to Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape if the party gains greater influence.

Mbalula insisted that the ANC must retain power to protect communities.

“If you want to see black people suffering, you must look no further than those who live in DA-led municipalities such as Cape Town. Our people are not taken care of by those ones,” Mbalula said during an ANC campaign over the weekend.

“Now they want to do the same in the Eastern Cape and in Johannesburg. We must make sure this doesn’t happen and our people are well taken care of, and that can only happen if the ANC retains power.”

Mbalula’s remarks were directed at the DA-led administration in Cape Town, where he alleged that residents in KwaLanga were left without housing assistance despite efforts to identify land for permanent homes.

He claimed residents eventually resorted to building shacks along a railway line after the proposed housing arrangements failed to materialise.

“Our people decided to build shacks on the railway line here in KwaLanga, Cape Town, instead of following through on what I had initiated to get people houses,” he said.

Mbalula alleged that land had been identified for residents to build homes but accused the DA of refusing to help.

“We found plots for our people to build houses, but the DA refuses to help our people here in the Western Cape,” he said.

He further accused the party of referring to South Africans, many of them from the Eastern Cape, as “refugees” instead of addressing their housing concerns.

Cape Town is frequently ranked the best city in the country.

“The DA ignored that and instead called our people, South Africans from mostly the Eastern Cape, refugees. That’s what the DA said,” Mbalula said.

The allegations were not independently verified in the information provided, and the DA’s response was not included.

Mbalula also warned that efforts to weaken the ANC threatened South Africans' interests, arguing that the party’s decline would have consequences for ordinary people.

His attack comes amid tensions over the ANC’s relationship with the DA in the national Government of National Unity (GNU).

President Cyril Ramaphosa has dismissed Mbalula’s calls to review the DA’s role in the coalition, underscoring differences over the ANC’s approach to its governing partnership.