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The Democratic Alliance’s latest attempt to mislead residents of Tshwane with its so-called “R777-million water tanker exposé” is a deliberate political lie. The DA has been caught working clandestinely with municipal officials to manipulate figures to smear the coalition government led by Executive Mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya while hiding its own disastrous record on water tanker expenditure.

Unlike Brink, ActionSA will deal in facts because they are on our side.

Over the past two financial years, covering both the DA and current administrations, the City of Tshwane’s verified financial records show the following:

• Under the DA-led administration, Cilliers Brink and his caucus presided over R419 million in water-tanker expenditure, including unpaid invoices from 2023/24 and first-quarter spending of 2024/25, all incurred before the current coalition took office.
• Under the current administration, since 16 October 2024, total verified expenditure stands at R342 million, which is nearly R80 million less than the DA’s own record.

The so-called “R777 million” figure shouted from the rooftops is not real expenditure. It is a system extract that includes cancelled and duplicated purchase orders, not verified payments, and further includes R179 million in unpaid invoices that Brink incurred in 2023/24.

This is the same Cilliers Brink who failed to pay R179 million in tanker invoices during his term, leaving those debts for the new administration to clean up. When those unpaid bills were finally settled in 2025, they appeared in the new books, creating the false impression of a spike in spending.

The DA also attacked the current administration for approving a R242 million adjustments budget in February this year yet conveniently ignored that R150 million of this amount was required because the DA-led administration had already exhausted its tanker budget by the end of the first quarter of 2024/25. 

In fact, the funding request was signed by the City’s COO on 16 September 2024, when Cilliers Brink was still Mayor. When the new administration took office a month later, it had no choice but to honour this request to keep water flowing during major Rand Water maintenance shutdowns. The allocation was later regularised through the February adjustments budget, correcting a shortfall entirely of the DA’s own making.

The truth is simple. Under the DA, water-tanker costs ballooned while infrastructure collapsed. The rise in tanker use mirrors the rise in outages caused by years of under-investment, failing reservoirs and neglected maintenance that all occurred on their watch.

The current administration is fixing what the DA broke. We are installing hydrant meters, expanding the City’s internal tanker fleet, investing in boreholes and permanent communal taps and building long-term water security so that Tshwane residents can rely on taps, not tankers.

ActionSA rejects the DA’s cheap political opportunism and stands behind the forensic investigation ordered by the Executive Mayor. That investigation will expose the truth, including which administration really presided over this mess and explains, perhaps, the DA’s insecurities on the subject.

If Cilliers Brink wants to talk about water-tanker “jackpots”, he should start by explaining the R419 million he signed off before leaving office. Having said this, it may be best for Cilliers to remain silent on the subject of water given his party’s record in presiding over the deaths of 31 Hammanskraal residents from cholera in 2023 after 7 years of the DA leading government in Tshwane.

Residents deserve honesty, not headline-hunting from a party desperate to stay relevant in a city it failed to govern. It is telling that Brink’s campaign focusses on projecting his failures upon Dr Moya given that there is an apparent lack of achievement on which to ground his campaign.

Issued ActionSA National Chairperson Michael Beaumont