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- DA leader John Steenhuisen took his Rescue South Africa tour to Cape Town on Tuesday.
- He says the DA will file a complaint with the Public Protector against ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa, who allegedly used state resources to woo voters at the weekend.
- Find everything you need to know about the 2024 general elections on News24's Elections Hub.
DA leader John Steenhuisen has threatened to report "manipulative" ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa to the Public Protector for allegedly using state resources to campaign for the May general elections.
Speaking during the Cape Town leg of the party's Rescue South Africa tour on Tuesday night, Steenhuisen said the DA would file a complaint with Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka's office.
However, he did not state when the party would take this step.
"At an ANC campaign event on Saturday, Ramaphosa promised the crowd of 500 000 skills training and job opportunities, not using the ANC's money, but a taxpayer-funded scheme.
"This also comes after the ANC in Gauteng already used a jobs manipulation scam called Nasi iSpani, promising hundreds of thousands jobs but actually using taxpayer money to dish out positions to ANC cadres."
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Steenhuisen was referring to Ramaphosa's utterances during his campaign trail in Gauteng over the weekend.
He said this was the ANC's latest "scam" to get votes in the upcoming polls.
Steenhuisen added:
He told potential voters the ANC was a bunch of "dishonest manipulators".
"For 30 years, the ANC has scammed the people of South Africa with promises that they knew they could never keep. They manipulate us with the promise of jobs.
"Over the weekend, one of the thousands of unemployed graduates who did what they needed to do and put themselves through university, but this lady could not find a job.
"And it breaks my heart, and I am sure yours, when you travel outside of the Western Cape, and you see our young people in their gowns.
"They sit there with their certificates at robots, begging for work. Is that right in a democracy? It's not.
We have got to make the president unemployed on 29 May.
"This ANC also manipulates us. They manipulate our young people with the promises of education, but all the while [Higher Education Minister] Blade Nzimande's NSFAS and those fat cats are eating the students' money.
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"This same government is busy manipulating us about load shedding.
"The ANC knows that they are going to lose the elections in 41 days' time, so now they are trying magic tricks that load shedding has ended magically overnight," Steenhuisen said.
He added load shedding had not "magically disappeared" overnight and would return on 30 May "with a vengeance".
"For the past five years, Cyril Ramaphosa has been manipulating us with his empty promises that he is going to fight state capture and end corruption, but he is the one who chaired the cadre deployment committee during state capture.
"He is the one who wants to send 90 of the state capture accused back to Parliament with him after the election.
"He is the biggest and most dishonest manipulator of them all.
"He made us believe in the new dawn, but we both know that the new dawn disappeared like the morning mist, and all that's been left is suffering, poverty, misery, and hunger."
Steenhuisen also accused Ramaphosa of lying about manipulating the criminal justice system by keeping former president Jacob Zuma out of prison.
He was referring to Ramaphosa's decision to grant Zuma remission in 2021, thus reducing the latter's contempt of court sentence of 15 months.
"To create a cover-up for the release of Zuma, he released 16 000 criminals into the streets of South Africa.
"Ramaphosa came out on Sunday to say he has 'no regret' about releasing these criminals to terrorise our communities."
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Steenhuisen said people were tired of being manipulated, adding: "We are going to bring the abuse of South Africans to an end."
Reiterating what he said on his Johannesburg tour, Steenhuisen added the ANC would continue to manipulate voters by "selling their votes to the EFF".
"The ANC has realised they no longer have any chance of getting a majority.
"So they are now planning to sell their voters out to the violent EFF in a doomsday coalition that will plunge South Africa into chaos.
"Julius Malema already confirmed that this is the plan. He has told us that the plan is for the ANC and EFF to form a doomsday coalition, with Floyd Shivambu as finance minister."
Steenhuisen said if the South Africans voted for the ANC, then they were voting for EFF policies to be implemented.
