“The ANC’s days are over and maybe the DA’s days are over. The independents are the way to go.”
This was the prediction from Twizza founder and CEO Ken Clark, who will contest the local government elections as an independent candidate.
Clark said he would be a mayoral candidate for the Enoch Mgijima local municipality.
“I’ve been trying for about four years to get the province to see that the municipality of ours is grossly corrupt.
“Things are not good; there has been a litany of court cases to try to force them to pay, including the Eskom bill.
“To do the right thing, we went to the premier [Oscar Mabuyane] and said he should dissolve the council because they won’t listen, they really won’t listen,” Clark told the Dispatch on Wednesday.
“We’ve had an administrator in place for about 18 months or two years. And still we get a situation where this fancy stadium [Lesseyton] for R22m gets produced for less than a million.
“That is bizarre. That makes you ask yourself, is he also involved in this corruption and that’s why he’s doing nothing about it?”
Clark said he was convinced the municipality and community needed strong leadership.
He said business people needed to come to the party to provide leadership.
“If businesses are not going to stand up and provide that strong leadership our communities are going to fail,” Clark warned.
“We just can’t allow the current situation to continue. If there is no strong candidate out there, who are we going to vote for?
“There is no strong candidate out there. I’ve put up my hand and am stepping into this thing. I’ll do the job.
“I promise I’ll fix the municipality and get the right people to do the right job, get service delivery happening and get infrastructure fixed and get all these things done.”
Clark said, given the opportunity, the first thing he would do was change the management to improve service delivery.
He said there wouldn’t be wholesale changes, but workers needed proper leadership. He said if workers were led properly, they would do a good job.
He said officials in the municipality needed to be competent and qualified and able to execute their mandate.
He said the big challenge was to convince the voting electorate that independent candidates were the right choice and could make a difference.
Clark was determined to overcome the challenges, while banking on his reputation to woo voters.
“How do you communicate over a wide area with the people in such a way that they can trust you, I think that’s a big challenge.
“I’ve been in the news for the last fours years trying to fix Enoch Mgijima' problems, so I've built a reputation of being somebody who knows what the problem is and when called upon will fix it, as I’ve done in the past.
“I think that gives me a measure of credibility among the people out there.”
Clark opted to be an independent candidate to improve his chances and give people an option to follow him instead of following a party.
“I believe this is the beginning of a new political dispensation in the entire country.
“I think the ANC’s days are over, and maybe the DA’s days are also over and something emerges out of the huge number of independents standing in municipal election that completely redefines the political landscape.
“Hopefully, after the elections we will start a new journey and get the country back on the straight and narrow.”
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