ANC and Cosatu slam Lesufi’s shower billboard, Zille says premier out of touch

Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi. Picture: X / @gpgSocDev The ANC and its ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), have moved quickly to slam the DA for using Panyaza Lesufi’s controversial remarks to dissuade South Africans from voting for the ANC in the local government elections later this year. Following a media briefing on Johannesburg’s ongoing water crisis in February, Premier Panyaza Lesufi faced public backlash for saying he had sometimes resorted to showering at a hotel when taps ran dry, a remark many residents viewed as out of touch amid widespread outages.

“In some instances, I had to go to a certain hotel so that I could go to my commitment,” said Lesufi at the time. “We also go through the same inconvenience like any other person; there is no special water or a special pipe that is designed to service other people and not service other people. “Our families, our relatives, ourselves, our constituencies, they suffer the same pain.

We do not have water when communities do not have water,” he said. On Tuesday, the DA unveiled an election billboard in Pretoria that mocked Lesufi’s comments, depicting him as being out of touch with the lived experiences of Gauteng residents. The billboardstates: “ANC showers in hotels, you have no water, vote DA.” The ANC’s provincial task team (PTT) spokesperson, Mzi Khumalo, accused the DA of using the water crisis in Gauteng to score cheap political points.

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He also emphasised that Lesufi has already apologised for the remarks he made at that press conference in February. “The DA’s attempt to reduce a complex infrastructure challenge to a marketing gimmick is not only misleading but deeply insensitive to residents who expect mature leadership, not campaign stunts and gimmicks,” he said. Khumalo said water security is “not a billboard competition” but a governance responsibility. “Before lecturing Gauteng residents, the DA must account for conditions in the Western Cape where spatial inequality, gang violence, and infrastructure backlogs remain deeply entrenched despite years of DA governance,” said Khumalo.

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