POLITICAL NEWS - The former Tshwane mayor says protests when he left the city interfered with his campaign for the Gauteng premiership.
Premier candidate for the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Gauteng, Solly Msimanga, was interviewed by Eusebius McKaiser on 702 and Cape Talk on Tuesday morning, where he detailed his reasons for stepping down as Tshwane mayor.
According to Msimanga, there were “so-called service delivery protests” every time he left Tshwane, which interfered with his ability to campaign for the premiership.
“Every time I would be out of Tshwane say, for instance in Soweto or Orlando, there would be so-called service delivery protests where nobody wants to talk to anybody except the mayor,” he said.
“Now you find you are not able to campaign,” he added, saying he was forced to go into “problem-solving” mode rather than “dealing with issues of campaigning”.
“And I said, do you want to continue this way and stand a chance of greatly failing or do you then ensure that we get someone who will be able to deal with the Tshwane issues on a permanent basis and I’ll be able to then concentrate on campaigning,” he continued.
Msimanga was sworn in as a member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature in February.
He had announced on Friday, January 18, that he was stepping down from the position of mayor to focus on his run for Gauteng premier.
