Durban - eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda has slammed reports he spent the festive season living it up in Cape Town.
Kaunda added that although the Cape Town was blessed with natural beauty like most of SA, he never set foot in Cape Town during the festive season.
Kaunda was responding to media articles and a statement by ActionSA claiming he "enjoyed his last festive season holidays at Cape Town beaches, while allowing holiday makers to swim in E.coli infested beaches in eThekwini".
ActionSA provincial chairperson, Zwakele Mncwango called on Kaunda to explain to eThekwini residents and businesses why he chose to enjoy the Cape Town coastline instead of dedicating his time and energy to dealing with the myriad problems on his own coastline that are directly attributable to his administration’s dereliction of its duty to repair the City’s infrastructure that was damaged nine months ago.
"In an attempt to not scare the public into staying away from eThekwini during the last festive season, Kaunda openly mislead the public into believing that E.coli levels were at an acceptable rate in Durban beaches, making them ‘safe’ for public use, while he cooled off in Cape Town," Mncwango said.
Kaunda said the reports were "malicious and damaging to his character".
"While I respect media freedom and journalistic creativity designed for interesting reading, I vehemently object to deliberately misleading the public in the name of satire. This is tantamount to abuse of power by the media as they influence public discourse," he said.
Kaunda added satire cannot be used to mask deliberate peddling of lies and spreading of misinformation.
He is demanding a retraction of the articles.
IOL