CAPE TOWN IS A CITY IN CRISIS

The City of Cape Town was turned into a city in crisis under DA rule. It is only through DA spin, smoke and mirrors that a favourable picture is painted. But what is the situation for millions of people in the city?

Cape Town's R23 billion budget with massive billions-of-Rand budget overspends (more than R5 billion) on the soccer stadium, the so-called Atlantis Integrated Rapid Bus Transport System which a year later is not fully operational (80 idle busses are rusting in the harbour area and the trunk route stop in Blaauwberg without going right to where thousands of Atlantis people need it) and the construction of new flyover bridges on main entrance routes are but the tip of the iceberg.

These examples are in stark contrast to the real measure for a large metro area such as Cape Town. The acid test is whether this city could spend money where the prevalent needs are.

Instead of growing its expenditure to assist people trapped in poor areas, the city under the DA reversed some of the spending trends and is spending about a percent of its capital budget on informal areas where people live in abject poverty. The majority goes into formal and serviced areas with existing infrastructure.

Cape Town is one of the richest per capita income cities (average R43 000) areas in one of the richest provinces of South Africa, yet it cannot find money from its own revenue to enclose the infamous undignified and illegal open toilets! Thereby Cape Town was reduced to the butt of the yoke all over the world!!

One of the biggest DA fallacies is that the city was broke when the DA took over.

The truth is, it is the DA left the city in ruin and heading for bankruptcy. When the ANC took over from the DA it inherited a city which was asset stripped by a basement bargain manager mind-set with spending above its income.

The state of affairs where so bad, the city received a disclaimer from the Auditor General! It was the ANC who had to turn that ship around as it was set to run onto the rocks. The process was headed by the ANC chief whip in the legislature Pierre Uys (then deputy mayor). The ANC got a clean bill of health for its first full year in power. It was the ANC who received a top grade credit rating.

When the DA came into power the city was financially healthy, soundly managed, with stabilised revenue streams and had a vast cash flow dowry. All the DA could do since was to liberally borrow against that and overstretching the residents' ability to pay.

The DA is taking money from poorly serviced areas to the serviced areas such as Bothasig. The DA sings its own praises about that new clinic there. The truth is, that formal area had a clinic service in the neighbourhood, chronic medication delivered to it and patient transport all provided by the state!

But, because the mostly retired residents of that area living in a number of retirement villages did not want to wait in line behind people of colour once every three months for check-ups at the closest day hospital, the DA built a new clinic for the already serviced Bothasig!

The then mayor, DA national leader Helen Zille, hurried in for a media photo-opportunity to turn the sod even before the budget for that clinic was approved by council!

This is in stark contrast to areas where people live without or little city infrastructure. Poor infrastructure and service delivery is a daily occurrence to the majority of ratepayers in Cape Town who have to struggle in formal houses with taps and toilets they installed, but no connection to the water or sewage line.

Many have to wade through sand pits instead of having decent streets. Clean water is a luxury which is great distances on the periphery where people live. Too many still have to use communal stinky bucket toilets or chemical potties which are irregularly cleaned. In Town 2 communal toilets are situated right next to a clinic. Sanitation and peoples' health seem to not be a DA priority.

If the DA cared at all much about the poor and ordinary people why is an area like Ruyterwacht where decay is turning that suburb into a slum?

More and more the city employs tactics of sending in its rogue Metro Police to antagonise residents by executing political agendas that end up in shootings.

From Du Noon to Elsies River and from Hangberg to Eerste River shotgun wounds are delivered by the DA. Not even innocent children are spared by the trigger crazy DA.

The DA has turned Cape Town into a By-law city with Sheriff Smith at the helm of the attack on the poor.

Instead of assisting poor people, they are hounded down and the only DA delivery they get are pink letters of demand and open toilets.

One area of concern is the fact that the metro police chief was fired. He was brought in by the DA, but was not qualified for the job. His stepson was also appointed, but not qualified. The head of training is also not qualified and was stripped of his uniform. At least 80 members of the metro police were appointed without the relevant qualification.

No wonder this rogue force resorts to skop, skiet en donder tactics. Too many examples of problems abound and recently two members were jailed for covering up a murder by another metro cop.

Clearly these unqualified men run around, defeating the ends of justice, not able to present proper evidence in many cases, and are used in illegal evictions or demolitions of dwellings (including places of worship).

Cape Town has a very large number of very poor people. About a quarter live in dire circumstances. There is a huge shortage of housing. But, when discovered by national minister Tokyo Sexwale and threatened to have it taken away, the DA dumped (the largest proportion by the City) R400 million this financial year given by the national government for housing to poor beneficiaries in the Western Cape which it could not spend. Thus less housing were delivered.

A major shift took place in the strategy to deliver houses under the DA. Instead of giving adequate housing, the DA now only wants to provide serviced sites. The shift also led to underperformance on housing delivery. There are 150 000 serviced sites in the Cape metro that was not developed during the past five years. The grand master plan of the DA to upgrade the 223 informal settlements also failed dismally.

People are put in TRA's (transitional housing areas) but are after five years still stuck there.

It was redirected to "other projects" not in the plan or budget. Most of it was used to spruce up council property. R80 million of that went to "operational costs"!

The ANC calls on the national minister to intervene and investigate the misuse the DA-led City of Cape Town and illegal redirection of money by the province.

There are housing crises in poor areas such as Nyanga and Mandela Park that needs his attention too.

Furthermore the ANC asks for special attention to be paid to the recent claims by many residents that they were forced to join the DA to get houses.

The DA preaches one thing on nepotism and deployment of party faithful, but practices something different. The City of Cape Town has been turned into an employment agency where DA people find careers. The DA chief whip Anthea Seretslev's husband is now a manager in the IT directorate of the city and DA MP Denise Robinson's husband were also employed there.

This is an old trait of the DA as it has done this in the province too and during its previous term in Cape Town it even gave a job to now DA MP Erik Marais (and husband of MPL Anroux Marais) who was fired at Absa for his part in the money laundering of a wanted German fraudster Jurgen Harksen's contribution to the DA.

There are also other examples of massive corruption where people aligned to the DA got tenders and even employees started companies, resigned and then got tenders to do the same work as consultants or contractors (javelin throwing).

This was most evident in the case of a former police chief who in the office of the municipal manager were involved in certain security work and ended up getting the contract to provide the same service to the city.

The DA claims it improved conditions for BBBEE tenders, yet it was involved in a fronting case into the Constitutional Court where it had to pay the legal fees as a penalty for not properly checking out the fronting company.

This is but one of a large and growing number of expensive court battles lost by the DA in government and for which ratepayers' foot the bill.

The aging city infrastructure upgrades like road building are neglected more and more.

Mostly visible patch repairs are done which is tantamount to sticking a plaster over substructure cancer and treating the surface decay with botox.

Priority services are delivered to the privileged on the A-list of Welgemoed or Blaauwberg and DA controlled areas. Workers have to drop everything in poor areas and rush to lush suburbs for even minor water pipe bursts or other problems, while raw sewage frequently spills into township areas.

Standing and contaminated water ponds abound which causes diseases and even death to many people every year. In Khayelitsha alone about 60 babies a year die of diarrhoea and other diseases due to poor infrastructure.

Many people suffer with contaminable diseases due to bacteria infestations. Thus the DA gambles with the lives of people by not providing proper services to the poor.

This is the true City of Cape Town run by the DA. A tale of two cities: One a priority area for the silver spoon residents and another where there is a lot of superficial talking but little action to really assist the poor. It is the immense disparity story of Khayelitsha opposed to Constantia.

The city merely acts as a post box for national government funding for priorities and programmes determined at that level. Most of the grants and transfers are conditional and specific to projects.

The city is merely passing the benefit on to the poor -compliments of the national government run by the ANC. And, to top it all, it cannot even be trusted with the money it received to build toilets.

The result is that Cape Town expends very little from its own revenue to assist poor people living in deprived conditions. On the other hand poor people cross subsidise the rich in business.

It is a city where the DA preaches one thing, but does another. It is keeping up appearances, but only stands for the protection of privileges; using sections of the residents as voting fodder and pretends to care about the poor. But there is very little to back up the many DA straight face claims of working for the poor.

In the DA this is a grave cause of concern that may reach a tilting point where it could implode on the DA as the DA discarded its liberal principles and policies to pretend to be everything to everyone. This lead to many spruced up stories about Cape Town. There are lies and then there are DA lies...

Thus the ANC maintains: The DA is a party for the privileged that does not care about poor and ordinary people.

Cape Town under the DA is a city of pretence and in denial. It does not substantially deal with the true issues. Thus: Cape Town is a city in crisis.

It is not up to the ANC to win the upcoming election, but for communities to remove the DA for its failures.

Statement issued by Songezo Mjongile, ANC Western Cape Provincial Secretary, April 7 2011

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