Malema tells Kokstad rally Mtolo's grip on the municipality ends on 4 November

Julius Malema has told EFF supporters in Kokstad that Bheki Mtolo’s control of the Greater Kokstad Municipality will end on 4 November, the day of the local government elections.

Speaking at the party’s KwaZulu-Natal manifesto rally at the Riverview Sports Field in Kokstad on Saturday, the EFF leader called the former ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary a “small boy” and said people linked to him had been stealing money from the municipality. As IOL reported on 5 October, Malema said those people would be arrested if the EFF took control of the council.

“We are going to take Kokstad and arrest all his friends who have been stealing money from Kokstad municipality,” he said, adding that Mtolo’s control would end “on the 4th of November”.

Malema also blamed Mtolo for the EFF being unable to use a stadium for the rally, saying the party would hold its gatherings wherever it could. “We don’t care about a stadium. We hold a rally everywhere,” he said.

He said the youth of Kokstad would play a role in removing what he described as the municipality’s rot ahead of the election.

On services, Malema set out two priorities for an EFF-led municipality: clean drinking water and reliable electricity. He said every yard in Kokstad should have a tap with drinkable water, and criticised power supply that fails in bad weather. “We don’t want electricity that is scared of weather. We want electricity that is reliable, that is affordable,” he said.

The accusations against Mtolo were made at a campaign event and have not been tested in any forum. Mtolo has not responded to them in the source material available to The Enquirer, and no criminal complaint or investigation arising from the remarks has been reported there. The Enquirer has not been able to verify the claim that people linked to Mtolo stole money from the municipality, and it is reported here as an allegation made from a public platform, not as an established fact.

Mtolo’s position matters in KwaZulu-Natal politics. He served as the ANC’s provincial secretary in the province, an office that sits at the centre of the party’s internal machinery and its relationship with municipalities. Kokstad, the seat of the Greater Kokstad Municipality, sits in the far south of KwaZulu-Natal near the Eastern Cape border, and its council is one of the prizes in the 4 November poll.

For voters in the area, the contest is also a test of basic delivery. Water and electricity failures are the complaints that surface most often in municipal elections, because they are the services households notice daily. Malema’s promise of a tap in every yard and power that holds up in bad weather is a promise about that daily experience, and it will be measured against the record of whoever holds the council after 4 November.

Source: IOL, ‘Small boy’: Malema says Mtolo’s control of Kokstad will end after elections