ANC accuses Tshwane mayor Nasiphi Moya of a vicious, anti-black business crusade

Tshwane Executive Mayor Nasiphi Moya’s current campaign is not law enforcement. It is a vicious, anti-Black business crusade.

This is the view of the African National Congress (ANC) Greater Tshwane Regional Executive Committee (REC), which condemned Moya’s actions.

These actions are related to the crackdown on informal-economy businesses operating outside the municipal by-laws.

“Residents and businesses requested tougher and equal enforcement of municipal by-laws, the Immigration Act, and the Labour Relations Act,” she said.

The ANC did not share her view, calling Moya’s actions a declaration of war against black entrepreneurs.

“It is a vicious, anti-black business crusade designed to systematically dismantle the township economy,” the ANC said in a statement.

“Mayor Moya’s administration has unmasked its deep-seated hostility toward the poorest of the poor.”

“Instead of introducing pragmatic programs to help emerging Black-owned businesses comply with city regulations, she has chosen the path of economic vandalism.”

The ANC said that the deployment of municipal machinery to smash and bulldoze the informal structures of hardworking citizens is an act of cruelty.

“This administration is destroying the capital of our people, forcing self-reliant families back into the desperate cycle of poverty and starvation,” it said.

“Mayor Nasiphi Moya dynamically deploys state resources to shut down and terrorise South African, black-owned businesses.”

It said these actions are tactics of entrenched neoliberalism that seek to protect corporate monopolies at the expense of local, grassroots economies.

The ANC calls upon township communities and informal traders to unite and push back against Moya’s anti-poor policies.

“We cannot fold our arms while the state is weaponised to clean the streets of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy elite,” it said.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba struck back, saying the ANC’s press statement is disingenuous and misleading.

“They are protecting illegality, not the real entrepreneurs, as they claim. Their interference with the work of the police is against the law,” he said. 

“They have allowed illegal foreigners to operate illegal businesses with impunity. South Africans are seeing them for what they represent.”