‘Free State govt practiced unfair electioneering in 2011 local elections’

Thuli Madonsela has released two reports relating to the use of state resources during electioneering.

FILE: Public Protector Thuli Madonsela. Picture: Christa Eybers/EWN.

Dineo Bendile | 1355 days ago

JOHANNESBURG - A Public Protector report on the conflation of state and the governing party has found that the Free State government practiced unfair electioneering during the 2011 local government elections.

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has released two reports relating to the use of state resources during electioneering.

She says the Free State government allowed two separate programmes to run under the same name ahead of elections resulting in a conflation of state and political party activities.

Madonsela says the Free State provincial government created public confusion when it allowed two separate outreach programmes to operate under the same name.

One was provincial government's Operation Hlasela programme which sought to address service delivery.

The other was a privately funded operation also known as Hlasela which publicly endorsed the African National Congress (ANC).

#Madonsela Remedial Action:

Premier Ace Magashule must set provincial policy to give clear separation of state and party activity. DB

EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 5, 2016

#Madonsela Remedial Action:

Premier Ace Magashule must ensure no government entity uses resources to market political party matters. DB

EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 5, 2016

Madonsela says while the private Hlasela programme didn't use state funds, it did use government resources to advertise the ANC.

She says regardless of the intention, running these programmes under the same name was a conflation of state and party.

The Public Protector has ordered the Free State government to create a policy setting out a clear separation between state and party activities.

As part of her remedial action she has placed the onus on Premier Ace Magashule to ensure such confusion doesn't happen again.

#Madonsela Free State Premier Ace Magashule later explained that these were two separate programmes. One of the names was later changed. DB
— EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 5, 2016

#Madonsela Magashule said while there was an initial conflation of state and party the matter has now been fixed. DB.
— EWN Reporter (@ewnreporter) May 5, 2016

Timeline

Comments

EWN welcomes all comments that are constructive, contribute to discussions in a meaningful manner and take stories forward.

However, we will NOT condone the following:

- Racism (including offensive comments based on ethnicity and nationality)
- Sexism
- Homophobia
- Religious intolerance
- Cyber bullying
- Hate speech
- Derogatory language
- Comments inciting violence.

We ask that your comments remain relevant to the articles they appear on and do not include general banter or conversation as this dilutes the effectiveness of the comments section.

We strive to make the EWN community a safe and welcoming space for all.

EWN reserves the right to: 1) remove any comments that do not follow the above guidelines; and, 2) ban users who repeatedly infringe the rules.

Should you find any comments upsetting or offensive you can also flag them and we will assess it against our guidelines.

EWN is constantly reviewing its comments policy in order to create an environment conducive to constructive conversations.