The people suffer while ANC cadres eat their way through FS resources

Note to Editors: The below speech was delivered by the Leader of the Official Opposition, Roy Jankielsohn MPL, during the debate on the Free State State of the Province held at the Fourth Raadzaal in Bloemfontein, Mangaung, today.

I would like to thank Free State Premier Ace Magashule and Speaker Mamiki Qabathe for providing us with the entertainment at this year’s SOPA. The vivid images of all these ANC cadres dressed in designer clothes and expensive shoes, wading through mud to get to the tables piled with food was a real Kodak moment.

George Orwell, the author of the books, Animal Farm and 1984, would simply have taken one look at Tuesday’s circus and said: “I rest my case”.

Speaker,

While opposition members of this Legislature were restricted to one visitor each, we can safely say that the 2000 people invited to attend SOPA 2017 were there to serve as the Premier’s own rent-a-crowd.

Speaker,

It must be stressed that having the SOPA at a private venue, which cost this Legislature more than R2 million, in addition to a yet undisclosed amount by the provincial government, was as far removed from our local communities in distance as in economic terms.

This year’s SOPA was one the most decadent displays of financial abuse and wastage that I have experienced, while between 30 and 60 kilometres away, in the communities of Tembalihle, Ezenzeleni, Qalabotjha and Ntswanatsatsi many people are without food, without adequate clothes, without employment and with little hope.

This state of the province address shamelessly epitomises what the ANC has become. We see now in practise what George Orwell wrote about in fiction. The ANC is in a pitiful state of disrepair, and attempts are made to cover up the cracks with arrogance, decadence and downright opulence in government.

Speaker,

A Premier holds a constitutional obligation to represent and champion the interests of all the people of the province. To strive in all his official actions to encourage reconciliation, promote unity and equality.

We did not see these qualities coming through in Premier Magashule’s address this week.

But what we saw is a Premier desperate to defend the indefensible.

Year after year, as the ANC government’s track record deteriorates and service delivery increasingly falls by the wayside, the Premier resorts to summoning the ghosts of our horrible past, to paint over his own failures in government.

Today, it seems that racial polarisation is the only trump card the ANC have left to defend its unabated looting of the State, its poor service delivery track record, and its abuse of power.

Premier Magashule must take heed not to play the populist by racialising crime. Criminals cause crime, not white people or black people or foreigners, but criminals.

South Africans of all walks of life and of all races fall victim to crime.

All crimes must be condemned equally, and not selectively used for the political agitation of one group against another. Such agitation is a sign of political insecurity and is used by leaders who lack character and vision. The type of leaders that Mathews Phosa refers to with the words:

“I cannot look the other way while shameless leaders without character or integrity wreak havoc with the principles of those who liberated our country…”.

After his introductory narratives of racial nationalism, the Premier spent the rest of his speech repeating much of what he has said in previous years, only changing the statistics here and there.

The Premier has mentioned the re-opening of redundant factories for the past few SOPAs, yet these factories remain closed.

The problem is that costly China Weeks and Trade Bridges, while they make him feel important, will not attract investment into the province.

Investors require a good transport infrastructure, reliable municipal services and credible officials and politicians to sell investment opportunities to them.

Our provincial roads infrastructure continues to deteriorate due to the lack of, and poor, maintenance.

Roads that are constructed or repaired, quickly deteriorate soon after the work has been done. Contractors in all provincial departments are notorious for abandoning projects after having received generous advance payments from government.

One of our most important routes between Viljoenskroon to Steynsrus via Kroonstad is life threatening due to large craters in what was once a tarred road. For years, residents have been complaining about the Abrahamskraal road at Bainsvlei while the Mangaung Metro and the provincial government squabble over who is responsible to maintain this road. These are but two examples among many others.

The Premier must note that private sector investment in the province takes place in municipalities. But how can business-minded people invest here when municipalities in the Free State owe Eskom over R4 billion, and when residents and businesses regularly face threats of electricity cuts due to non-payment by local councils of their ESKOM accounts?

In fact, Municipal Managers and Mayors are committing fraud by taking money for electricity from residents and businesses and not paying this money over to Eskom.

At the same time, water and sanitation services remain problematic due to poor maintenance, the lack of expertise, and unresponsive political management.

Similarly, some municipalities are not making payments to UIF, pension funds and medical aids despite making deductions from the salaries of municipal employees.

Honourable Speaker,

Listen to this!

In Dihlabeng, the municipality bought the Bibi Building for an inflated R11 million, but it has never made use of that building. It is alleged that this building has been sold, without council approval, to a senior politician and official for only R2 million and that they immediately resold it for R5 million before the registration took place. Such criminal actions are committed with impunity across the province.

ANC members in this House must stop howling when we say that our government is a kleptocracy. We will be exposing more examples of corruption and blatant criminality entrenched in this government during the various budget debates.

Speaker,

I would like to remind the Premier that last year he indicated that he was appointing Cuban engineers because he could not find South Africans. He even came with the words: “Bring them to me, I will appoint them”. I brought the Premier a CV of a young chemical engineer graduate and this was ridiculed in this House. Till this day, this South African graduate remains unemployed while municipal waste treatment plants continue to pollute our scarce fresh water resources due to negligence, incompetence and even corruption in chemical purchases.

Our people are victims of poor services because the engineering skills of Cubans are in many instances functionally useless for municipalities.

The financial burden of the Premier’s infatuation with Cuba are at the cost of basic services.

Some Cubans still live in guest houses, struggle with language issues, and are unable to use their skills effectively.

I must educate the Premier by informing him that not all engineers are the same, a hydraulic engineer cannot do the work of a chemical engineer.

No audits were carried out to determine what skills were required by municipalities and whether these skills were available in South Africa first. The Premier went to Cuba and recruited anyone who could supply an engineering certificate, no matter what sub-discipline they were qualified in.

Another annual feature of the Premier’s address has been the issue of opening redundant factories at QwaQwa, Botshabelo and Thaba Nchu. This promise is never met.

The Premier must listen carefully when we tell him that he cannot reopen factories, he needs to create an enabling environment for private sector investment in local economies.

This requires a functionally skilled work-force, effective and efficient services, sound infrastructure and some local incentives.

By incentives, we do not mean government funding in exchange for shares for the political elite and their cronies, those kind of exchanges are what is meant by punting the ANC’s new favourite term, radical economic transformation.

While the ANC government does its best to destroy hope among our people, hope still remains.

In the DA-run Western Cape, rural unemployment is at 14%, while unemployment in the rural Free State is at 40,9%.

Business confidence is 10 points higher in the Western Cape than the rest of the country and, as an indication of new economic investment and development, the construction sector employs 160,000 people and contributed R30 billion to the provincial economy last year alone.

Construction is a sign of development, and not just government sponsored construction, but private sector construction. With sound and honest leadership, this could also be done in the Free State, but definitely not under an ANC government.

With all the hundreds of millions of Rands spent on overseas trips and trade expos at taxpayers’ expense in the Free State, all that the Premier has to show for this is 170,000 more people unemployed since he came into office in 2009.

Premier Magashule has failed to achieve anything significant in eight years and will now spend the next two years trying to create a false legacy with name changes and monuments to foreign leaders.

While the EPWP jobs are an important interim safety net and should be a skills development exercise for young people, these jobs remain temporary. Investment that should be creating life changing career opportunities for young people in the Free State remain the pipe dreams of political rhetoric.

While we celebrate the high matric pass rate, we are concerned by the high drop-out rate at our schools. More than 60% of learners drop out of school before matric and are left functionally illiterate and unemployable.

While some of our young people are able to complete schooling and even attend tertiary institutions, the skills that they learn will, in many instances, not enable them to get a job in a modern technologically driven and electronic web-connected world economy.

In the DA-run Western Cape 5,612 curriculum aligned content ePortals supply digital resources to learners, 5,320 classrooms are tech enabled and by April this year, 1,239 schools will be connected to the Wide Area broadband network. In addition to many other initiatives to support learners, 475,000 learners receive two, not one, two nutritious meals a day at schools.

Speaker,

In closing, I must use this opportunity to voice my concern about the capture of the two important pillars of democracy by the executive, namely the legislature and the media. We are well aware that the restrictions placed on the opposition in the Legislature, and the deliberate undermining of its rules, are done on direct instruction from the Executive.

Attempts to capture the media is best illustrated by the creation of a company called Letlaka Communications by the Premier and his cronies which was financially empowered through lucrative advertising, printing and other deals such as a government website.

This patronage also funded the creation of the Premier’s own publicity agency, the Letlaka owned The Weekly newspaper. The critical English newspaper, the Free State Times was economically strangled by withholding government advertising from it and threatening businesses that advertised in this paper. This paper was then bought out by Letlaka and immediately shut down.

Community radio stations have received government sponsorship which is very unhealthy for an independent press. The latest Nielsen figures indicate that another beneficiary of the Premier’s patronage has been the New Age that received R4 million from the provincial government last year alone.

The Premier furthermore ensures that important appointments in the SABC newsroom in the Free State are made by him, and manipulates the news further through these appointments. His controversial friend, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, was instrumental in ensuring this. That is why he used his address to indicate that he stands by Hlaudi.

The manipulation and shutting down of a free press in the Free State is a crucial instrument to cover up, through mendacious propaganda, an eight-year premiership that has failed to significantly improve the lives of the many, while creating an environment for the politically connected few to plunder and systematically eat their way through our provincial resources.

The Premier has failed our people in the last eight years and can do nothing in the next two years except further expand his patronage network to allow him to continue to plunder after he has left this office.

It is time for the voters of this province to take their futures into their own hands and vote for change.

Change that brings real jobs through an opportunity driven environment.

Change that places the needs of the people first. Change that creates not only a better future but a better present for our unemployed youth.

Change that only a DA-led government can secure.

Issued by the Democratic Alliance, 24 February 2017