STATEMENT BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD SECRETARY GENERAL & MEMBER OF WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT
16 February 2021
Premier Alan Winde’s State of the Province Address tomorrow will once again seek to position the DA-led province as more competent and less corrupt than the ANC-led country.
It is an extremely low bar strategy that has worked for the DA for a number of years. It has worked because of the ANC’s well-proven record of incompetence and malfeasance, and because of the subliminal demographic foundation on which it is based: The DA represents the interests of national minority groups, and they’re keeping the ANC out.
But it is an unsustainable strategy because it doesn’t translate into better housing delivery. It has no impact on the culture of gangsterism which is the lived experience of so many of our people. It doesn’t lead to cleaner or safer streets. It doesn’t put food on tables, and it doesn’t give people their dignity back. It is just spin and hot air.
It provides cover for the Premier and his MECs to make fantastic anouncements and pronouncements, and sound clever, without ever having to actually deliver anything or truly being held to account.
WHERE’S THE WESTERN CAPE’S COVID PROCUREMENT PLAN?
Take Covid-19. Given the mistrust in the propriety of national government, the idea that the Western Cape is somehow better than them and will procure its own vaccinations will sound plausible to some. But like many of the province’s amazing schemes, detail is sketchy.
Will the Premier use his SOPA to spell out some of the detail? Is the Western Cape competing with national government to obtain supplies? From who? And if the Western Cape manages to get its own supplies, is the Premier saying that people who are at low risk in the province should get vaccinations before, say, vulnerable groups in the Eastern Cape?
Meanwhile, the questions we ask about Covid corruption in the province, such as the R40m procurement of tents to which to herd the homeless from the City of Cape Town under lockdown, go unanswered.
WHERE’S THE INNER CITY AFFORDABLE HOUSING PLAN?
The Premier will no doubt get the fancy footwork out when it comes to housing, and the City of Cape Town’s fundamental failures, or refusal, to develop affordable housing in the inner city.
Once again, we can expect the Province to blame national government for its housing delivery failures. In September, the MEC for Human Settlements was asked to elaborate about 300 hectares of land he claimed had been released across the province. It turned out he was boasting about a number of old projects, at various stages of development.
We discovered that a total of 437 hectares of land had been released for housing developments over the past 11 years. Of the 18 housing projects slated for this land, one has been completed and seven are under construction. The majority of the projects are either not yet in development or have been cancelled.
In Cape Town, the only Metro under the control of this province, there is a backlog of 600 000 houses while well-paid officials live rent-free in city-owned houses. These properties are well-maintained by the city, sometimes at a cost of millions of Rands. In November 2020 I asked the MEC to advise the number of city-owned housing units in the Hanover park area and those needing repairs, as well as the budget to implement these repairs. There are 3296 units in Hanover Park, 369 needing repairs with a budget of R330636.21. That amounts to R896-00 for each of the 369 units needing repairs as stated by the City.
Will Premier Winde use his SOPA to rationalise spending R132m to refurbish the new headquarters of the Department of Education at a time that many people find themselves in acute economic distress?
WHAT ABOUT DA-LED CADRE DEPLOYMENT IN THE WESTERN CAPE?
Will he speak about DA cadre deployment, given that his MEC for Local Government was recently found guilty by the Public protector for breaching the Ethics code after interfering in recruitment in George? How many other similar letters has Mr Bredell written? Does the Premier have a view of Stellenbosch Municipality being ordered to pay a settlement fee of R750 000 to an employment applicant who was replaced by a candidate who did not meet the job criteria?
WHY IS THE “SAFETY PLAN” NOT REDUCING GANGSTERISM AND MAYHEM?
What soothing words from the Premier lie in store with respect to safety? Of course, he can blame national government for failing to bring crime under control. But what is the Premier’s message to the people of Manenberg and Hanover Park? How does he convince residents that his government gives a damn about gangsterism and crime in their, and other areas? We recently learned, in answers to questions I asked in the provincial legislature, that Cape Town had quietly abandoned its much vaunted Shotspotter project. The project cost R31.8 million and led to 67 people, but we don’t know how many, if any, of these 67 were prosecuted.
The position the country is in is one of desperation. Covid has been much more than a public health and economic disaster. It has stripped us of our pretences of decency, fairness and justice, exposing the hideous inequality that defines our society. For as long as we don’t address this this inequality we don’t live in a sustainable society. Time is running out.
What we need from Premier Winde are real plans to address inequality in the post-Covid society we must collectively build. Real plans to address spatial injustice in our towns and cities, real plans to address social injustice and the hideous environments in which too many people still live.
Ends…