CAPE TOWN - The DA and the ANC clashed over who is best suited to govern the City of Cape Town during the Big Metro Face-Off debate between Geordin Hill-Lewis and Jeremia Thuynsma.
Housing, job creation, safety and basic service delivery were the biggest points of contention.
Both parties defended their record and promised to take the Mother City forward.
DA Cape Town mayoral candidate Geordin Hill-Lewis stood his ground.
He argued that the DA has made significant progress over the past five years, warning that the ANC returning to power could put that progress at risk.
“The ANC is desperate to take over Cape Town again, and we have seen what they do wherever they govern across the country. There is nothing but destruction left in their wake... We are the most functional and successful city in South Africa. That is not to say that we do not have challenges, but the fact is we have moved forward," he said.
ANC representative Jeremiah Thuynsma insisted that their party's track record proves that it has experience to run the city once again. Pointing to their time in office between 2003 and 2006.
"The ANC has an opportunity to show all of you who are Capetonians that we want to continue what we have started in 2003 and wanted to basically continue until after 2006 when we basically were governing the city. We have shown to you that we basically can deliver on the needs of the poor. We were able to basically deliver more houses in those three years than what the DA did."
Hill-Lewis accused the ANC of making false claims about its housing record when it was last in charge.
The DA leader disputed that the ANC built more homes during its time in office than the DA has delivered in two decades.
"According to the city's published annual reports for those three years, they built 9,862 homes. In the first three years of DA government, we built 23,534 homes.”
But the ANC Cape Town mayoral candidate pushed back against those numbers.
Thuynsma claimed that more than 16,000 houses were delivered against an original target of 29,000.
He further accused the DA of refusing to continue with the project after taking over the city.