40% Government contracts for women - just more opportunity for ANC to enrich themselves
10 August 2020
Note to Editors: Please find attached a soundbite by Natasha Mazzone MP.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is strongly opposed to President Cyril Ramaphosa's announcement that 40% of Government procurement contracts will be set aside for businesses owned by women. This is not a sincere effort to empower women, but rather yet another cynical attempt by the ANC to loot the state coffers even further.
South Africans must not be fooled. It is not ordinary women who will benefit from this announcement - only ANC cadres and those connected to them will get the contracts and kickbacks. The ANC does not care about women's empowerment, they only care about their own pockets.
Government procurement contracts should be awarded on merit, and merit alone. At a time of severe economic hardship and record unemployment, poor people need contracts to be awarded to those who deserve to get them, and not because one is connected to the corrupt ANC. BBBEE and quotas of any kind have not helped poor people, it has only enriched the ANC and its cadres.
Our opposition to this blatant attempt at capturing every last rand of public money, is not an opposition to women's empowerment - even though this is what the ANC would like citizens to believe. South Africans have been abused by this government for long enough to see that this is just BEE and a quota system in another form and only the ANC will benefit from it.
It is a disgrace that whilst we are fighting a scourge of gender-based violence the ANC is using "empowerment" as a smokescreen for yet more looting.
We have seen the same modus operandi at the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), where the ANC has used the entity to loot and line the pockets of ANC Youth League cadres, under the guise of transformation and progression.
Very soon there will be nothing left to steal.
The DA sees through this blatant corruption. It's just another sign that Ramaphosa is part of the corrupt ANC. They don't have what it takes to empower women.
Issued by Natasha Mazzone, Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, 10 August 2020
