ANC to focus on developing Grabouw 

The Western Cape ANC demands immediate action by the DA-led Western Cape provincial government to take steps to alleviate the school congestion in Grabouw and to retract racial stereotype labelling by premier Helen Zille. 

Western Cape ANC leader (deputy minister for international relations and cooperation) Marius Fransman at a Human Rights Rally in Grabouw said the DA disregarded the very human rights of learners to give them proper access to quality education by allowing them to be cramped into two too small schools. When people protest the fact that more than double the number of learners are forced into the classrooms intended for far less, the DA leader (Zille) retaliates with the nerve to call the learners for whom schools has to be build Eastern Cape "refugees" on Twitter.

"The children in need of proper facilities are of coloured and African origin, are staying in and around the townships and are not merely that of seasonal workers as the DA claims. Here Zille's prejudice is exposed. Her petticoat of bias is hanging out. In fact, her intolerance of people from the Eastern Cape is again showed up and the emperor is found to be without clothes. She paints them with the brush of suspicion as if they are regarded as foreigners in their own country. Indeed it is Zille who makes isiXhosa speaking people from the Eastern Cape feel unwelcome and aliens in the province which is already not very friendly towards African people," says Fransman.

Fransman addressed the community and ANC supporters on the education crisis there and alternatives to the stalemate between the people of Grabouw with the DA administration. He condemned the violence earlier the week and asked the police to also investigate the role of a DA aligned group of provocateurs.

The community is dissatisfied that temporary classrooms will come later, and be erected on sports fields or on land across the busy N2 highway which poses a grave dangerous to children running over it to the other side, not on empty municipal land closer to the former white town centre.

"The ANC says at least the six unutilised classrooms at the town's former Model C school should be used to alleviate the pressure until the promised new schools are build. The learners and staff can be transported to those empty classrooms, while the DA reprioritise the building of at least two additional schools for the community. 

"The building projects of the new schools were prioritised by the ANC, but the DA shelved these plans as the racist DA wants to keep the Theewaterskloof municipality as white as possible. There is money for the schools. The DA should stop to withhold human rights and services," says Fransman.

He also pointed out various lies spread to create tension between coloured and African people in the area, like the overcrowded Groenberg school were also burnt. Later Zille without proof on Twitter also wrote: "When ANC tries to burn down schools..."

"The DA shifts blame to cover up its own problems as it is rapidly losing support and there is an open rebellion by the whites who are losing control in that party. The DA cracks and problems are rapidly growing. There is also no ANC ‘project reclaim' as the DA avers. The ANC is busy with a good political programme to solidify ANC support in the province and the DA has no counter for that, but tries to tar the ANC.

"While the DA has no solutions to offer, the ANC is in Grabouw where the community resolved with the ANC to unite and solve problems. We are also setting up a Grabouw Education Forum to focus on quality education for learners and skills development to create opportunities for the youth in the municipal area where money will be invested for amongst others alternative energy projects and to make Theewaterskloof a regional growth node for entrepreneurs.

Statement issued by ANC Western Cape leader Marius Fransman, March 21 2012

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter