Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen has urged the Public Protector to urgently investigate the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) abuse of taxpayer funds for the purposes of election manipulation.

Steenhuisen was speaking during the premier of the Rescue South Africa campaign anthem in Cape Town, where he announced that his party would be filing a complaint with the Public Protector against ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa’s so-called manipulation of public resources as part of the ANC’s “increasingly desperate” election campaign.

The complaint follows Ramaphosa’s promise of the creation of 500 000 skills training and job opportunities using a taxpayer-funded scheme.

Steenhuisen said this came after the ANC in Gauteng already used the Nasi iSpani jobs programme for campaigning, where the party promised hundreds of thousands of jobs but which the DA said actually used taxpayer money to “dish out positions to ANC cadres”.

He said these schemes were just the latest attempts by the ANC to “manipulate the people” at taxpayer’s expense.

The DA said the ANC could not be allowed to get away with “constantly lying” to the public with promises they have no intention of keeping.

Steenhuisen warned voters that the ANC now planned to sell voters out to the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), claiming that the ANC had realised they no longer have any chance of getting a majority in the upcoming election.

“So they are now planning to sell their voters out to the violent EFF in a Doomsday Coalition that will plunge South Africa into chaos. [EFF leader] Julius Malema already confirmed that this is the plan,” he said.

Steenhuisen said Malema had told his party that the plan was for the ANC and EFF to form a coalition, with Floyd Shivambu as finance minister.

“If we allow the ANC to pull off this latest manipulation, you will end up with the same person who helped loot VBS Bank as your finance minister. EFF policies will be implemented and your property will be expropriated without compensation, your pension will be looted, your savings will evaporate, and inflation will plunge you into starvation,” he said.

Steenhuisen said in the upcoming elections, a vote for the ANC was a vote for the “chaos and violence” of the EFF.

“So if you are tired of being manipulated by the ANC, and if you don’t want your vote to be sold out to the violent EFF, then now is the time to vote for the DA,” he urged voters.

Meanwhile, Steenhuisen said where Ramaphosa had failed to lock up the “State capture crooks sitting around his own Cabinet table”, the DA would do so.

The DA accused Ramaphosa of manipulating the criminal justice system to keep former President Jacob Zuma out of prison.

Steenhuisen claimed that “to create a cover for releasing Zuma”, Ramaphosa authorised the early release from prison of more than 16 000 convicted criminals in August last year.

This included nearly 4 000 thieves, over 2 500 housebreakers, 400 robbers, 20 arsonists, 17 kidnappers as well as six domestic abusers and rapists, he added.