South Africa’s abnormal society: We must elect leaders with integrity to re-balance our country

27 May 2024

Note to editor: This speech was delivered today by GOOD Leader Patricia de Lille at the Cape Town Press Club. 

Thank you for inviting me to address this important institution of opinion-shapers. 

Over the years – from my trade union days, through the negotiations for our Constitutional democracy, and the decades I’ve had the privilege to serve my country at all levels of government – there have been many times that I have disagreed with what journalists have written or broadcast.

In the context of this election campaign, for example, as a candidate for Premier in the Western Cape, I believe some journalists have been guilty of inadequately interrogating the DA’s message (or misleading statistics) that it is leading the province exceptionally well. Well run for who? 

Even so, I regard your ability to reflect news and views as sacrosanct. It is one of the things we should celebrate about our democracy. It is a sea-change from the past.

When our daily news is filled with accounts of the misadventures of powerful politicians – even a President – the media isn’t muzzled. Indeed, it fills a void, holding the crooked to account, that should primarily be the occupation of honest politicians and state institutions.

Brief analysis of national progress

Some people claim there’s been no change in South Africa since 1994. Others go so far as burning the national flag, and claiming apartheid was better. They’re talking nonsense. 

All South Africans have the right today to live where they wish, travel where they wish, marry whoever they wish… People of colour didn’t have any of these rights in the past.

Nor can we deny that the democratic government has built millions of fully subsidised homes, or the number of people who have been connected to water, electricity and sewerage. 

In terms of foreign policy, we were the isolated and boycotted skunk of the world but are today an important voice in global diplomacy and global power relations. Our taking Israel to the ICJ demonstrates that our moral compass, finely calibrated on the injustices of our own past, is still in working condition today.

But… Despite the real gains we’ve made, most South Africans would agree that we should have done better. We should have made more progress restructuring the shape of society… integrating communities forced apart by apartheid planning… turning our backs on patriarchy and disdain for women… balancing the imbalances of the apartheid economy.

The scale of the work required to re-engineer a society moulded by prejudice for 350 years was enormous. We simply couldn’t change everything overnight. The way the Constitutional Court put it, in the famous Grootboom judgement, practicality dictated that the rights afforded in the Constitution would have to be implemented incrementally. 

The trouble we’re in is that this incremental transformation process has proven slow. Many of the abnormalities, exclusions and injustices that defined the apartheid state remain present today. 

After 30 years of democracy, much of the foundational work required to effect real societal transformation has been left undone. For many citizens, life is about bare survival; they are growing impatient to taste the fruits of freedom.

The abnormal society

In this abnormal society, it is normal for millions of people to lead wretched lives. It is normal for them to live without access to adequate water or sanitation. It’s normal for boys to join gangs, and for girls to be abused. It’s normal not to have job. 

And its normal for people to flash past the un-serviced shacklands in their air-conditioned cars, on their way from the suburbs to the airport or the wine route,  and accept what they try not to see too closely as “normal”. They worked hard to afford a nice house and car, they say.

It isn’t normal. It is a legacy of injustice, that is immoral, unsustainable and an environment for instability.

Nowhere is the abnormality more stark than in our beautiful Western Cape, with Cape Town regularly listed among the top cities in the world to visit.

Here, it is normal to welcome international medical tourists to undergo world-class plastic surgery, while local children die from easily treatable diseases due to the unsanitary conditions in which they live.

It is normal for tourists to get mugged in townships near the airport because, hey, they’re townships and townships are crime-infested areas.

We can’t accept this as normal. We can’t simply say, “tough luck” to millions of people who, through no fault of their own, don’t have jobs and can’t afford food.

We can’t say to the family forcibly removed from Claremont to Manenberg 50 years ago, who for generations has clung onto their dream for some kind of justice, that they must continue dodging bullets, and avoiding piles of garbage in the streets, because it’s normal.

If we are to develop a stable and sustainable state, in which all citizens feel they have a stake, we have to stop the suffering of the marginalised and excluded.

That, to me, is what this election should be about. Electing leaders with the integrity to stop our imbalances from toppling us right over the edge.

The evolution of party politics

After 350 years of colonialism and apartheid, the dominant parties in the post-apartheid period have either failed or demonstrated no appetite to create a workable non-racial state.

The ANC disregarded the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations on social and economic redress, land reform has been too slow and, with a few exceptions, the country’s wealth largely remains in the hands of the previously privileged.

The ruling party wasn’t placed under any pressure to address the country’s unfinished business by the official opposition, because the official opposition has no interest in redress. 

Thus we remain among the most unequal countries on earth, and 30 years after turning our backs on colour-coded politics our inequality remains largely colour-coded.

It’s like a death-dance. The one’s incompetence benefits the others’ agenda. They have been good for each other, but not for the country. 

The environment they have created provides oxygen for those pushing identity politics and racial agendas, who seek to re-divide us before we’ve ever really come together.

There’s a chronic need for viable alternatives that will enable the growth of common purpose. That was the primary rationale for establishing the GOOD Party five years ago. GOOD wants to contribute constructively to building something better.

The old horses must be put out to pasture

I want to address GOOD’s posture with respect to both the old parties because I know it’s something that you will raise when given the opportunity for cross-examination.

The first point relates to my acceptance of the President’s offer to serve in Cabinet. Just about every day I read references in the press to GOOD being in alliance with the ANC. By this reckoning, the IFP, Azapo and FF+ must also be in alliance with the ANC, because their leaders, too, served in Cabinet.

How do those saying GOOD is in bed with the ANC explain the fact that GOOD councillors work with DA colleagues against the ANC in some municipalities?

As for the DA, I have personal experience of their agenda to maintain the social hierarchy of the past. 

As the Mayor of Cape Town, recognising the injustice that not a single affordable home had been developed in the inner city, or surrounding areas, my colleague Brett Herron and I developed a far-reaching proposal to develop affordable housing on publicly-owned land, but the conservatives in the DA caucus blocked us.

When we refused to back down they shamelessly lied about us. I had the High Court force the DA to retract its lies four times in the run-up to the last general election.

I called them the Blue Liars, and in this election campaign they’ve lived up to the name. They have built their entire campaign, that the Western Cape is well-run compared to the other provinces, on a  nest of lies… about generating 78% of all jobs in the country… about murder rate coming down due to their R2B safety plan, when in fact they have gone up… there’s a long list.

A number of these lies were recently interrogated by Africa Check, and found severely wanting.

It was instructive that on national television last week, when interrogated on the truth of the DA’s best-run narrative, the party’s chief whip Siviwe Gwarube conceded that the story applied only to certain parts of Cape Town.

The DA also claim to be less corrupt than other provinces, and therefore obtain better audit results. Selling the idea that people of colour are generally incompetent and untrustworthy is an important strand of its swartgevaar strategy.

The independent organisation Corruption Watch recently published its statistics for 2023 placing Cape Town among the three most corrupt Metros, and the Western Cape fifth on the list of most corrupt provinces.

Curiously, Cape Town’s audit results seem unaffected by the City’s crooked deals. 

One incident we know of relates to the City’s irregular procurement of tents to house homeless people to the tune of nearly R50m. The  SIU found the procurement irregular and recommended pursuing the return of the money from the City’s service provider. The City obtained a clean audit…

The point is that the idea that one of them is a good and clean horse and the other steals and cheats is a complete fallacy. They’ve had their time, dividing and misruling us. It’s time to look forward. 

Flights of fantasy

The old parties can see the writing on the wall for their two-horse race.

Acknowledging that it will never have sufficient support to form a government on its own, the DA formed a moonshot pact to corral votes given to parties other than the ANC. 

According to their narrative, parties are either part of their moon trip or support the what they call the doomsday alliance, led by the ANC and EFF.  Nothing else exists.

The ANC has been no more subtle in its attempts to maintain its position of power by trimming the wings of new rivals, rushing the Electoral Matters Amendment Act through parliament, with its clauses to defund new parties in the electoral race.

They are swimming against the tide, and will both learn later this week to show more humility.

It is said that the way to eat an elephant (or two) is one bite at a time. The old parties aren’t about to disappear. They’ll still be standing on 1 June, but according to all the analyses that I take seriously their powers will be diminished, possibly to the point they are no longer able to form governments on their own.

Many South Africans have witnessed the dysfunctionality of coalition governments at municipal level, and fear similar chaos could engulf government at provincial and national levels. 

We say, we must embrace coalitions as a necessary phase of the country’s political evolution. Who is sent to parliament is determined by the will of the people. Once they get to parliament, MPs have responsibilities to all South Africans, not just their own parties. 

The GOOD Party doesn’t do moonshot or doomsday. At municipal level, our approach has been to remain outside formal coalitions, but where necessary work with other parties to break deadlocks and get the work of government done.

GOOD distinguishing characteristics

GOOD is a social-democrat party. We advocate for a free market economy, with a strong business sector AND a Sate that is willing to intervene to fulfil our Constitutional requirements to create a country of justice for all.

For the past two years, after commissioning our own economic research on affordability, we’ve been advocating for a Basic Income Grant of a minimum of R999 a month – because the R370 SRD grant is insufficient to sustain the eight million people who receive it.

Government says the country can’t afford a BIG, but it can afford to pour Billions of Rands into the sand on wasteful and unnecessary programmes and projects – and to lose Billions more to corruption.

We need to rethink the structure of government, including the number of ministries and departments, the expense of the provincial tier,  and the devolution of certain functions to the local tier.

South Africa is not a poor country, but it has made poor choices since 1994. The State has delivered many plans, some very good, but it has been consistent in its inability to implement them.

By changing the structure of government, we will be able to change the structure of the unequal society.

We are not a poor country, and nor do we lack expertise. Whoever is in charge of the State mustn’t be shy to look beyond its own ranks to recruit this expertise. At some point, politicians need to acknowledge their obligations beyond their own parties to the nation.

We also need to acknowledge our brokenness with respect to gender. Apartheid was about racial exclusion, but also about patriarchy and misogyny. Party manifestos contain obligatory references to defeating gender-based violence. These are tick-box exercises, while our women and girl children are unsafe at home and on the streets.

Disregard for women is a scourge requiring a whole of society response. A huge part of the problem are broken families and the exposure of boy children to unequal gender relations. Families are the basic units of societies.

Crime: More police, or more human and community development

Everyone talks about the need for more police, but not enough people advocate for more social workers, more school psychologists, more drug and alcohol rehabilitation, more programmes offering developmental opportunities to youth.

The Western Cape Government shifted money out of its education and health budgets to fund its R2B safety plan. Three years later, murder is up, GBV is up, and gangsterism is running rampant.

There’s a school in Salt River, called the BEST School, that does incredible work guiding children from the Cape Flats, predominantly, who have experienced the trauma of violence, substance abuse and broken homes through their high school education.  

It is one of precious few schools doing work of this nature in the province, but it is going to close at the end of the year because the provincial government has reduced its funding.

We need more such interventions, more programmes to help the development of young people. 

If we don’t fix our communities, and prioritise the development of our young human capital, we’ll need ever-increasing numbers of police – until we become a police state as we were under apartheid.

The economy and jobs

There are no quick fixes for the economy or unemployment rate. South Africa never properly rebounded from the 2008 global recession, and was severely set back by Covid. 

The unstable supply of electricity, State Capture, capital flight and a struggling education sector have all contributed to an environment that has not been conducive to economic growth.

Medium-term predictions aren’t good. The economy will grow, but not sufficiently fast to provide the numbers of jobs we need. In the meantime, as the population grows, so does the need for more jobs to accommodate new entrants to the market.

One-and-a-half percentage point growth over the next few years is way below the five to six percent needed over a sustained number of years, to rectify the imbalance.

That’s why a Basic Income Grant is a priority. Millions of people can’t go without food for five or 10 years while they wait for the economy to recover.

The best growth path we have is to prioritise the development of infrastructure.  This will have short-term benefits, such as creating jobs, while at the same time laying the foundations we need for society to be able to prosper.

Infrastructure to build transport corridors and ports, but also to turn the rotten informal settlements in which millions of our people live into decent and dignified living spaces.

Properly managed, the transition to renewable energy has the potential to be another mass generator of capital and jobs. But South Africa needs to move fast to become a producer of renewable energy technology, and not just a user. 

Because generating electricity with coal is labour-intensive, we can’t talk about a just transition from coal to clean energy sources without managing the impact on 10s of thousands of coal workers. We’ve been talking about re-skilling workers for years but, once again, fall short on the implementation.

National Health Insurance

I thought I should touch on the NHI, because it’s probably something you’ll raise. 

When the President signed the NHI Bill into law, GOOD issued a nuanced response different to that of other parties. We supported the objective to narrow inequalities in the provision of health services, but called for more dialogue with the health sector to respond to concerns that have been raised prior to its implementation. A few days ago, the President announced there was room for such dialogue.

We support narrowing inequalities in health services because the inequalities are a vestige of past injustice that can’t be regarded as normal. Not only in health, but in just about all other sectors of society.

I don’t believe that because there’s a possibility of corruption in the NHI’s implementation this should block the country’s path to justice. On that basis, we’ll remain stuck in the past – which is arguably where those opposing the Act would prefer us to be. We must use the grace period for dialogue to eliminate the possibilities for corruption in the system.

Once again, we must have the foresight to rely on the guidance of experts in this field; not solely on politicians and civil servants.

Election funding

Considering that we live in one of the most unequal countries on earth, where more than eight million people live on R370 a month, many in conditions not fit for human habitation, it needs to be said that the amount of money spent on election campaigns is obscene.

I have seen Tik-Tok videos over the past few months of DA members handing out little DA branded plastic bags of dried beans, and loaves of bread, and ANC members tossing t-shirts from their moving cars to people in the street who have nothing to eat.

All of these items, and the food parcels and other trinkets, are paid for by the political parties – with much of their funding coming from a handful of billionaires. That’s the funding we know of, because it’s declared.

These billionaires, some of whom accrued their wealth as direct beneficiaries of the apartheid labour system, and others who have built empires on the backs of people of colour more recently, have largely thrown their money behind parties with anti-transformation agendas, specifically with regard to economic transformation.

Besides serving their own agendas, their involvement in the game contributes to a growing mistrust of politicians and our political system.

They live in towns and cities with stark divisions in quality of life, and put their money behind parties who’d like us to regard it as normal.

The contestation of ideas shouldn’t be a contestation of billionaire’s money. 

We need to look at our political party funding model again…

Issued by Janke Tolmay, GOOD Media Manager, 27 May 2024