SPEECH TO THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE AND SECRETARY-GENERAL
23 OCTOBER 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic has decimated economies across the globe. Economic growth has collapsed and unemployment queues have grown.
South Africa has not been spared this misery and neither has the Western Cape.
I agree with the Premier that we need to be bold and courageous if we are to navigate our way from this unplanned and unforeseen crisis and its devastating impact.
But we also need to be meticulous.
We need to be meticulous about what we will do, when we will do it and what we expect to achieve.
The Premier has not been meticulous.
The Premier presented broad-sweeping old promises that failed to meet the crisis.
The Premier is putting lipstick on a pig.
These are not bold and courageous plans. These are the same plans being presented to us for a third time camouflaged with new labels.
On the 18th July 2019, last year, the Premier addressed this Parliament for the first time. He committed to creating jobs. He committed to ensuring a dignified life for each and every resident. He committed to safety.
Likewise at the State of the Province address in Mitchells Plain on 20 February 2020.
We were promised a “job in every household”.
We were promised an environment conducive to growth and jobs.
We’ve were promised a support package for small businesses including an SMME booster fund.
We were promised red tape reduction.
We were promised a streamlined and smaller government.
We were promised an energy secure future.
We were already promised a game-changing minibus taxi project to incentivise improved taxi transport.
We were promised integrated housing and affordable housing opportunities in proximity to our economic centres.
We were promised enhanced commuter rail.
We were promised a Premier’s Priority Committee on Safety, and then a Safety Plan and a Safety Cabinet.
The Premier’s special address to Parliament, yesterday, was just recycled ideas we’ve heard all before.
There’s nothing wrong with choosing a strategy and staying the course.
But then why present the ideas as something new and as being in response to the biggest crisis of our time?
Why not report to this parliament what these old plans have achieved to date and how they will be strengthened to respond to the crisis?
The one bold and courageous idea we should have heard a lot more about was funding an infrastructure programme through borrowing.
I agree that we need our own version of the “new deal” – a massive infrastructure led economic growth and employment programme.
But because the Premier was not meticulous this was presented as some vague pie-in-the-sky idea rather than a well thought out plan with details as to what infrastructure would be built, where, for what value and for what cost-benefit?
Speaker, the Western Cape Government is becoming a government of announcements.
The people of this province deserve real plans and the meticulous details.
Bold and courageous intervention can be staying the course with tried and tested plans.
But then we need to hear how these plans are being implemented, what they have achieved to date and how they can be improved.
ENDS