The ANC in Johannesburg said on Tuesday that DA Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba cancelled critical projects to distract residents from his failure to deliver services.
The ANC cited as an example the cancellation of the state of the city address scheduled for Tuesday.
After a special mayoral committee meeting on Saturday, Mashaba said the city would cancel Jozi My Beginning, a partnership with the University of Johannesburg through which the city invested R50m in small businesses, including small container malls.
Also axed was the Jozi Digital Ambassadors programme, on which the city had spent R70m in training people to use its free WiFi offering, along with micro mushroom farms and stone paper projects.
The city cancelled the Blue Economy Project in which it had invested R150m in solar-powered bakeries using mango flour imported from South America.
"The mayor of Johannesburg [Herman] Mashaba has recently cancelled critical projects which he deems as vanity projects of the past administration," said an ANC statement.
The party said this was because Mashaba had not delivered to Johannesburg in line with his mayoral acceptance speech.
But Mashaba defended the cancellation of certain projects, saying this was to save the city money and foster job creation.
Mashaba said the projects were cumbersome and offered no value for money. "I have come to believe that the previous administration was misguided in its approach to economic development and lacked a focus on sustainable economic growth and job creation.
This was why the number of jobless people in Johannesburg had risen to more than 800,000 in the past five years, said Mashaba.
The mayor said the projects were not a solution to the Johannesburg’s economic challenges and the focus should rather be on small and medium-sized businesses.
The ANC was due have a media briefing on the issue on Wednesday.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.