Western Cape Provincial Parliament: Budget Paying Lip Service To Improving The Lives Of The Poor And Disadvantaged

5 December 2023

Note to editor: This is the statement that was delivered by GOOD Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament Peter de Villiers during today’s sitting. 

Honourable Speaker, 

The more I listen to the budgets and re-adjusted budgets being tabled in this House and despite my being a member of this House, the more I tend to agree with the growing calls to do away with this level of government.

By doing that, we would free up these billions of rands that we are being asked to vote on to address the urgent and genuine needs of the people such as a basic income grant, free education, home based care givers and the development of rural areas.

These are aspects that this DA led government is failing to address with these budgets.

All I have experienced this tier of government to be, is an unnecessary drain on the ficus and a bottleneck to service delivery and development. 

If one looks at the lack of interest being shown in projects such as a new hospital for Atlantis, the fact that this government is now for a third year in a row not keeping its word to invest in a new shelter for those living on the streets of the CBD, but has seen fit to increase the original budget 3-fold to merely expand existing shelters that those living on the streets have already indicated that they are not willing to be housed at and have been proven ineffective in reducing the numbers of those living on the streets, one sees a government intent on pushing through budgets that suit their own agenda and show how out of touch it is with the needs and wants of the public it is meant to serve.

It seems to me, we should then rather be releasing both human and material resources caught up in this glorified administration that costs tax payers billions to strengthen local government and service to the people, rather than it being swallowed up by the bureaucracy I see all around me in these proceedings.

The existence of this Parliament has not added value to service delivery and the hope that this tier of government would ensure the value of a people’s assembly has not materialized. 

The manner in which these budgets are presented are foreign to most of those whom we sit here to serve.

This house and it’s activities are currently being manipulated from within with suggestions of increased membership, devolution of powers and cessation in order to suite specific agendas and a select group citizens.

All it has done and continues to do is entrench tribalism and regionalism.

The budgets before us all seek to entrench the status quo in this DA run province-and that is the protection of the white privileged minority. 

The poor and disadvantaged are being paid lip service to in this Provincial Government. 

Rather than face their own flaws, the DA has not tabled one budget today without laying blame for all its own failings on the National Government.

The Provincial Parliament is meant to be responsible for education, health and social development and is responsible for the economic functions like agriculture and roads. Yet even in these budgets, they have failed to take responsibility for their own failings and blamed the National government.

Every member of the DA that has responded to these budgets have ended their speeches by pleading with the general public to vote out the ANC come the national elections in 2024. This was not the platform from which to canvass support for their party. This platform was meant to explain and motivate their failed budget.

The GOOD Party cannot support this budget.

Media Enquiries: