Helen Zille SOPA: Western Cape’s heartbreaking, and betrayed promises of integration and equality

Helen Zille, Premier of the Western Cape, opened her State of the Province Address by self congratulating herself of her very delayed discovery of the popular American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, an act itself, when told to others, was intended to present her as some form of a thinker, a Thinker by association of course.

Unfortunately, her delayed discovery throws her into a trap, typical of none-Thinkers presenting themselves otherwise, of celebrating both theories and their champions which have since been discredited by events and subsequently abandoned.

Francis Fukuyama is more popular of course less for the material Zille accidentally discovered, “the Origins of Political Order and Political Decay” but more for his work, 'End of History' published in 1992. Fukuyama sums up his thinking by presenting the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Zille of course, if she was a Thinker on any level, would have known that rule of law, accountability, and the capable state "American-style" democracy, presented by Fukuyama as the only "correct" political system and the argument that all countries must inevitably follow this particular system of government has long been discredited and abandoned.

The world, from China to India to the Middle East and North Africa have long rejected this universalization of Western liberal democracy and correctly so. The corrosive nature of the Western liberal democracy has the west itself, including leading thinkers such as Joseph Stiglitz, questioning its values. The poorest half of the US owns 2.5% of the country’s wealth. The top 1% owns 35% of it. The wealthiest 40 people in the America have more money than the 40% of the population. In fact, Italians, Belgians and Japanese citizens are wealthier than Americans.

This is exactly the level of inequality and inhumane policies that the Democratic Alliance under Helen Zille has brought into this province, with their fervent admiration for Fukuyama. In his research work, World City Syndrome: Neoliberalism and Inequality in Cape Town’, David A McDonald concludes that Cape Town has become the most unequal city in the world, due in part to a ‘world city syndrome’ that deepens these inequalities and plagues its urban planning. Mcdonalds paints a theoretically pathbreaking, if politically heartbreaking, account of post apartheid Cape Town and the betrayed promises of integration and equality.

The Democratic Alliance has brought corrosive inequality into the Western Cape that is entrenched with each budget allocation and each provincial government plan. Unless one has a broken sense of seeing nation states, it would be incomprehensible to consider a province with this level of inequality strong on the rule of law, accountability, and capable. It has to be concluded that the Provincial Government is running a mafia ring, hell bent on benefiting a few and legitimising criminality using the state.

Contrary to what Helen Zille sees everywhere, young entrepreneurs and innovators, highly motivated and making a difference in our society, the majority young people in this Province are trapped in an unbreakable cycle because the provincial government has left them to fend for themselves.

Helen Zille make significant grave errors in her speech, some a variation of her rhetoric that has put her in trouble and earning her a title of being chief racist.

We charge Helen Zille for effectively declaring that the thousands of young people who remain at the periphery of the economy in this province, disproportionately damaged as they are, only have themselves to blame, their alcohol and drug abuse, their violence, and where that does not work they can look into their own broken families.

We charge Helen Zille for effectively declaring what is a question of a Province with a 400 year concentration of resources to a select few and calling the comparative contribution of this province to a now New and Integrated South Africa a cross subsidization of poor South Africans. This is crude and renders Zille helplessly racist.

We charge Helen Zille for what can be effectively called a State of the City presentation, which has business proposals and projects for the better parts of the city, and a condescending and insulting moral lecture for the other side, on alcohol and drugs. Her persistent propagation of the notion that all we require to deal with the economic problems in the poorer urban areas of Cape Town is to curb alcohol and drug abuse, critical thought these matters are, is not only a figleaf to hide the reality of a deadly inheritance, but also constitutes an abdication of a responsibility, without whose discharge the cesspool which feeds all economic and social trauma will remain and continue to spawn its bitter fruit.

It does nothing to solve the problem, or to build the necessary united provincial effort, to add insult to injury by suggesting that alcohol abuse is endemic to the poor and predominantly none-white communities. The same thinking must apply to crime. The notion that all we require to deal with the problem of crime is merely more police officers and strengthening of the criminal justice system as a whole is short sighted and again an abdication of responsibility. It perpetuates that all none white people are just violent and all they need is just more police. Again Zille is inherently racist and let all the people see her for what she is.

We charge Helen Zille as a chief racist who continues to perpetuate this idea of an influx of people from other provinces particularly the Eastern Cape, draining the precious resources of this province and putting a burden on her health and school facilities. Again after 400 years of concentrated resources in the Cape, at the expense of almost all of South Africa, its not worth mentioning that in the now open South Africa, our people who want to go and enjoy services in those previously advantaged areas.

To continue to highlight these huge percentages of population growth, effectively sending a message that she would have preferred if things had not changed, that the select few would be enjoying much of the resources, presenting a glossy picture of a well runned corner of the country. Zille must be charged as a chief racist.

Despite this State of the Province being a racist statement, masquerading as a speech on the economy, even in that front it fails dramatically. Despite her claim, there is no strategy for economic growth and job creation in the speech, there is but a collection of dry records with a few projects from various departments signifying no transformative moment now or in the future which may bring hope to those so marginalized.

This Province deserves a new normal.

Statement issued by Yonela Diko, ANC Western Cape Media Liaison Officer, 23 February 2016