The City of Johannesburg has accused Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi of grand standing and micro-managing the mayor and his team in dealing with the Bree Street explosion.
The Star understands that the city and the premier held different media briefings on Thursday on the event.
This as Joburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda and his team were denied access to a provincial hospital when they went to check up on those injured in the explosion on Wednesday; and in instances where the premier and the mayor were scheduled to share the podium on media briefings, Lesufi was accused of taking over the show.
In an interview with a local radio station, MMC of Public Safety Mgcini Tshwaku said the province’s behaviour undermined the mayor and local government authorities.
“He (Lesufi) has been playing these politics, when we went to the hospital when we asked them in terms of the mayor wants to see those individuals so that he can inform the families about what is going on they refused bluntly, and I asked them why are they playing politics on the lives of these individuals,” he said.
Tshwaku said the matter was made worse when the premier gave an “uninformed” media briefing on Thursday afternoon.
“We told him that we are still being briefed by technical experts in terms of what is happening because there was a concern (whether) this blast will actually occur again. He chose to go in there without getting a proper briefing, so we said we are not going to be part of any press conference which is not informed by the information which is coming from the office of the executive mayor and also coming from Public Safety,” Tshwaku said.
He said the City of Johannesburg was on top of the matter and had made great strides in ensuring the safety of those who use the CBD for business and those who live there.
“In the constitution there must be inter-governmental relations. It was the metro police under my department that went on site at the time, they cordoned off the entire area. It was the EMS working with the province. They were the ones doing investigations and they are the ones that were checking the tunnels and they discovered a body.”
The City was still uncertain about the cause of the underground explosion, but a number of reasons have been bounced around, including speculation that a chemical reaction underground had led to the disaster.
Responding to accusations of a poor relationship between the City of Johannesburg and the province, spokesperson for the Gauteng government, Vuyo Mhaga, said: “We should not dilute this critical issue with some politics, but to put things into perspective, we have been working together. We are shocked that there are these kind of things. They could have picked up the phone and sorted this out.”