ActionSA's premier candidates for EC, FS & Mpumalanga say they want to revive provinces
The party on Tuesday announced its runners for provincial office in Eastern Cape, Free State, and Mpumalanga, who now face the difficult task ousting the ANC out of their stronghold provinces.
ActionSA announced three of its Premier candidates in Mpumalanga, Eastern Cape and Free State on Tuesday 13 February 2024. Picture Thabiso Goba/Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG - ActionSA's newly picked premier candidates said they wanted to revive their respective provinces, which they claimed had been run into the ground by the African National Congress (ANC).
On Tuesday, the party announced its runners for provincial office in Eastern Cape, Free State, and Mpumalanga.
The three face a difficult task, as the provinces are ANC strongholds, which the governing party won by about 70% in the previous elections.
Eastern Cape’s candidate, Athol Trollip, said the province’s beaches had high levels of E. coli, which affected health, tourism and business.
“If you export products that have E. coli contamination, the competing countries of the world want to find that with Eastern Cape products and prohibit the exportation of Eastern Cape products. Once that happens, unemployment will go through the roof, Mr President.”
Free State’s candidate, Patricia Kopano, said the first step to fixing the province was to stop corrupt services from doing any further business with government.
“I have already written to the National Treasury to invoke Section 28 of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Activities Act of 2004, and by so doing [that] means I am requesting them to blacklist all the companies that stole money in the Free State so they must never have a business in the country.”
Mpumalanga’s candidate, Thoko Mashiane, said the coal-rich province needed to fix its rail infrastructure network to lessen the number of trucks on its roads.