Straight Talk
25 June 2022
If you're feeling hopeless about South Africa’s future, here’s some good news showing that the DA is a proven alternative for South African voters, and we are fighting hard for a real new dawn.
Clean government
Last week, Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke released the annual municipal audit outcomes. She reported that 73% of municipalities in DA-run Western Cape received clean audits (22 out of 30), while the eight ANC-run provinces averaged just 8% (19 out of 227). DA-run Midvaal in Gauteng received its eighth consecutive clean audit.
Practically, a clean audit means public money is spent on the public, so things work, so people feel confident to invest in the future, so jobs are created.
Yesterday, StatsSA released the 2021 General Household Survey confirming that DA-run Western Cape scores highest on almost all service delivery metrics:
• 99.4% of households having access to piped or tap water
• Less than 4.9% of households reporting water interruptions (the national average is 30.8%) • 94.5% of households with access to improved sanitation in the country
• 94.8% of households of households with access to flush toilets
• the WC having the highest proportion of households that get refuse removal at least once a week
• 95.1% of households connected to the mains electricity supply • the WC having the highest proportion of children in pre-school and grade R
• 71.2% of WC households deriving their income from salaries (the highest in the country – speaks to the relatively high number of people employed in the province compared to other provinces)
Where things work, people work. So it is no coincidence that the unemployment rate (including those who’ve given up looking for work) is 16.5 percentage points lower in DA-run Western Cape (29%) than the average for South Africa (45.5%), according to StatsSA’s QLFS 2022Q1.
Clean government translates into jobs and a higher quality of life. Where the DA governs, life is far more likely to be easier and get better.
Pro-poor government
The DA-run Western Cape also comes out tops by far on delivery to indigent households, being households that qualify and are registered for poverty relief in the form of a basket of free basic services. According to StatsSA’s Non-Financial Census of Municipalities 2019:
- Overall service delivery to indigent households is 96.8% for Western Cape against a national average of 53.1%
- Water: 97.4% compared to SA average of 74.4%
- Electricity: 97.9% compared to SA average of 63.2%
- Solid waste management: 96.6% compared with SA average of 68.8%
Capable government
The DA difference springs from merit-based public appointments. Ability to serve the public is the sole criterion that DA governments use for selecting public officials. This tends to build a clean, capable state that delivers to all.
By contrast, the ANC’s policy of deploying politically loyal cadres systemically destroys the public service, producing a corrupt, incapable, captured state that enriches those in the ANC’s patronage network at the expense of the rest.
I cannot emphasize this enough: the difference between merit-based appointment versus cadre deployment is between keeping the taps running during the Cape Town drought and the taps running dry during the NMB drought; between safe roads in good condition and dangerous potholed roads; between keeping the lights on and being regularly load-shed; between affordable rail transport and a collapsed rail system; between having a job and being unemployed.
This week, the DA released a mini documentary showing how ANC cadre deployment is the root cause of corruption and state capture.
DA vindicated
Also this week, the DA’s decades-long fight against cadre deployment was fully vindicated when Chief Justice Zondo released the final instalment of his State Capture Report, confirming that cadre deployment was the mechanism whereby ANC cronies captured the state.
The report states: “it is unlawful and unconstitutional for a President of this country or any other government official to take into account recommendations of the ANC Deployment Committee.”
The Zondo Report personally implicates President Ramaphosa as being deeply complicit in state capture. “It must be noted that President Ramaphosa was the Chairperson of the Deployment Committee for a period of five years, between December 2012 and December 2017, and that many of these appointments (and indeed the worst excess of State Capture) occurred during this period.”
DA action
The DA has fought cadre deployment relentlessly. By exposing it at every opportunity, by making critical submissions to the Zondo Commission, through our End Cadre Deployment Bill in parliament, and through our ongoing court challenge to outlaw this destructive policy, we are rewriting the history of South Africa.
We are also pursuing every avenue to hold President Ramaphosa to account for his alleged actions in the 2020 theft at his Phala Phala game farm and for the central role he played in state capture. We do so to uphold the principle of equality before the law and to defend South Africa. The entire ANC, from the head down, is a criminal syndicate that must go.
Conclusion
With ANC support having fallen below 50% in 2021, the era of extractive, incompetent, corrupt government is drawing to a close. The DA has shown South Africa that we have what it takes to build an honest, skilled state that delivers to all the people of South Africa. Progress is faster where we govern outright, but we have shown we can manage complex coalitions that make steady, if slower progress. A real new dawn is on the horizon.
John Steenhuisen
