Free State SOPA debate – Government undermines the social contract

5 July 2019

On 8 May 2019 the people of the Free State braced cold and wet weather conditions to vote in the national and provincial elections. These elections heralded the sixth administration of the Free State Legislature.  The outcomes of the elections were disappointing for all moderate political parties since, although not the majority, too many people opted to vote for parties on the extreme left and extreme right of our political spectrum. The greatest concern, however, remains apathy among voters, since it indicates a lack of trust in our democratic system.

We are not oblivious to the reasons for this. The outcomes of the elections require moderate political parties to be more vigorous in our endeavors to espouse the preamble of our constitution, especially the sentence that states that we have to: “Heal the divisions of our past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”.

While we all analyze the outcomes of the elections, we can find solace in the wisdom of Helen Suzman who once said: “The immediate present belongs to the extremists, but the future belongs to the moderates”. You cannot successfully counter extremism with more extremism.

Throughout history, moderates eventually end up victorious, because average citizens eventually realize that extremists are self-serving and that extremist electoral choices have a devastating impact on their lives, as well as those of their children and grandchildren.

As we are already preparing for the local government elections in 2021, we will have to educate our electorate on the benefits of democracy, and specifically how this system can be used to bring about tangible changes in their lives.

We are grateful to our DA supporters who ensured that we continue to grow our seat allocation in the Free State Legislature. It is with great pride that I stand here as leader of larger caucus, a caucus that has much institutional memory and an understanding of the constitutional mandate of this legislature, which is to carry out oversight over the executive of this province and to hold the executive accountable for their actions and promises to our people.

The Premier’s State of the Province Address (SOPA) every year serves as the basis for implementing this constitutional mandate.

During her SOPA, the Premier indicated that whilst campaigning she was confronted by people complaining about the slow implementation of government programmes to alleviate unemployment and poverty, complaining about the lack of basic services such as water, electricity and sewerage, complaining about the dilapidated state of our provincial roads and other infrastructure and complaining about corruption and nepotism. Basically all the things that a decade of Ace Magshule’s Operation Hlasela, which she was part of as a senior  member of his cabinet, was meant to eradicate, but ended up entrenching.

In this respect I would like to remind this House that when the DA pointed out the above issues together with many irregular activities that were taking place under the pretext of Operation Hlasela we were ridiculed, insulted and threatened by members of the ANC.

I will interrogate some of the key issues that the Premier presented to us in her SOPA. The Premier said that: “The creation of jobs for the benefit of our people is not negotiable”. I would like to know from her whom she is not going to negotiate with over job creation.

A decade of mismanagement, corruption and nepotism has driven out many of the companies and people with whom the Premier could have negotiated. The 40% expanded unemployment rate in the province, and 65% unemployment among young people under 25 years is a result of a provincial government that has employed an attitude of entitlement, elite beneficiation, patronage and unashamed malfeasance to benefit the privileged few at the cost of the masses. The Premier recently wrote an article about the social contract, well the ANC-government has undermined every principle on which any social contract between a government and its citizens exists.

The Premier talks about placing youth in management positions, and we would all like to see this taking place, but management of what companies? The few construction companies that are beneficiaries of government contracts are not going to feed the hunger for meaningful employment that is a ticking time bomb in our province.

We would all support the Free State Youth Expo, if we were invited to it. The Premier indicated that: “It was a good Expo, it was so nice”. Nice for whom, because the youth that participated in our soccer tournament which I attended in Mashaeng last Sunday were oblivious to this Expo, as were the many young people in ward 30 in QwaQwa whom I met with the Sunday before that.

The Premier gave us a long list of commitments from the provincial government that include, among others, incubator programmes, social pacts and partnerships with businesses, building a spirit of patriotism, business training opportunities and five thousand advanced training opportunities in ICT skills. The Democratic Alliance supports all of these ideas, but they remain ideas until we are given specific details on who is involved, how many young people will benefit from this, and what tangible plans and budgets are in place to implement them. The few examples that were supplied are not even a fraction of what will be required to deal with the problem of youth unemployment. These examples indicate a “band aid” approach to this problem and a lack of understanding of what is required to deal with it.

Unfortunately, years of ideologically based policies implemented through a captured cadre deployment strategy aimed at benefiting a factionalist political elite through a patronage network based on nepotism and corruption has eroded our provincial and municipal administrations, and left them floating rudderless in a sea of financial maladministration and debt.

The problems in our economy are structural in nature. Our provincial government will have to undergo a paradigm shift if we are going to make any difference in the lives and livelihoods of our people. Our provincial government must first understand that you cannot repeat the same programmes under different names in various SOPA’s and expect different outcomes. The provincial government should follow a “back to basics” approach to its core mandate that includes the following realities:

- Government has to realize that it can never be the primary employer of all our people, which is the prerogative of the private sector.

- Government has to acknowledge that you require a growing, not a shrinking tax base, to obtain the funds necessary to deliver basic services. You cannot keep on insulting, threatening and abusing your business community, and expect them continue to patriotically invest and create jobs in our country.

- Government must protect all its citizens, deliver a sound infrastructure and create an enabling legislative economic environment for private sector investment. Our provincial budget must be linked to tested action plans and best practices that can be learnt from the DA-run Western Cape government.

- Government must deliver quality and relevant education to our youth that caters for a rapidly evolving digital world.

- Government must ensure that we have quality healthcare and a secure safety net for those who are not able to look after themselves.

- Government has to maintain an effective criminal justice system to carry out its basic social contract to protect its citizens from harm. The best deterrent to would be criminals is the knowledge that if they commit a crime they will be detected, prosecuted and punished.

We agree with the Premier that tourism and agriculture still have huge potential to grow our provincial economy. Agri-processing remains an area of untapped potential for local and foreign investment.

Part of the Premier’s plan to deal with unemployment, poverty and inequality in rural areas is to give the people of Cornelia five cows. I would like to know how five cows per household is going to contribute to long term poverty alleviation. I can guarantee the Premier that, because our people are hungry, these cows are going to be eaten. After a year our people will still be without employment, still be poor and still be destitute.

The issue of land was raised by the Premier and we acknowledge that this remains an unresolved political issue in South Africa. In this respect the ANC and EFF must not try to blame our commercial white farmers for the slow pace of land reform. If you want to make them responsible for land reform, then give them the budget for this, together with the authority to draft and implement land reform policy, and then just sit back and watch it happen. The Free State has one of the best initiatives for private sector land reform in the initiatives of Nick Serfontein from the Sernick Group. We should learn from, and support, such initiatives.

We must take note of the findings of the high level panel report under the chairmanship of former President Kgalema Motlanthe that indicated that the failure of land reform was mainly due to corruption, the channeling of money to elites and lack of support to beneficiaries of farms purchased by the state. We need to look no further than the Vrede Dairy Project as an example of all of the above.

We must also note that the vast majority of successful beneficiaries of the land restitution process opted for monetary compensation instead of land.

We support the Premier’s suggestion to first use state and municipal land for land reform purposes. With many state owned farms derelict and non-productive, we cannot afford to further threaten our commercial food production required to feed a growing urban population through self-destructive populist policies and legislation.

We do support the Premier’s commitment to ensure that people receive title deeds to property that has been allocated to them. Title deeds remain an instant source of wealth, dignity, pride and economic empowerment.

The Premier mentioned that our agricultural sector has potential for further economic growth and job creation. We must nurture this sector that is under constant political attack and receives little government support, who are the main economic victims of policy and tenure insecurity, who lose billions of rands to crime and who are at the forefront of the impacts of climate change.

In spite of all of this, our farmers continue to produce agricultural commodities under conditions that are some of the most hostile for any farmers in the world. As such, they have emerged as the most resilient and innovative sector in the country. Our commercial, emerging and subsistence farmers are, and should be treated as, national assets.

Another important aspect that the Premier mentioned was that of crime. The DA remains concerned by the high incidences of crime, especially farm attacks and violence against women and children. Any positive initiatives to deal with crime will have our support. We must, however, acknowledge that this is a problem of a dysfunctional criminal justice system and not just the SAPS.

As an example, last week people who attacked a woman on a farm at Arlington last year were given bail after their case had been postponed a number of times. The victims and witnesses in the case now live in fear of their lives. We join the Premier in expressing in our sadness over the abuse, rape and murder of our elderly and youth, often by young people. Last week the community of Mashaeng buried young Mamajeremane Mofokeng who was raped, had her throat cut and left to die on a lonely piece of veld.

Even though the SAPS are not a provincial competency, we believe that our private member’s Bill, the “Community Policing Bill” can assist the MEC responsible for policing to strengthen his constitutional oversight functions over the SAPS, improve relations between the SAPS and the community, allow greater support to community organizations involved with crime prevention through registration and support and create trust through the creation of a provincial police ombudsperson.

An important issue that the Premier failed to adequately deal with is our failed local governments. We cannot ignore the fact that residents and businesses receive basic services from municipalities. No one can contest the initial strides we made as a country in the first decade and a half since 1994 in providing people with access to water, electricity, housing and infrastructure.

Over the last decade we have seen how corruption, maladministration and lack of consequence management in our municipalities by factional cadres has caused many of these gains to be reversed.

A tap without water is meaningless, a light switch without electricity is senseless and a flush toilet without sewerage infrastructure is hazardous. Similarly, sporadic or no refuse removal are environmental and health risks in our streets.  Landfill sites ignore all environmental legislation with no criminal consequences as prescribed in legislation. These landfill sites could be sources of alternative electricity generation.

The Director General indicated to the press this week that we can expect a further decay of municipal services due to decreased equitable shares and poor debt collection. While the equitable share is outside of the Free State’s control, the poor debt collection is a direct result of political decisions by politicians and politically appointed cadres. It is ludicrous that Mayors and Speakers are often the worst perpetrators of non-payment for municipal services. No resident should be expected to pay an account while those responsible for enforcing payment are themselves guilty.

In closing, I would again like to emphasize that our province and its people deserve a better story. A good story depends on open-minded individuals who acknowledge our past, but take ownership of their future by using their democratic freedom to make their own political choices. Governments do not fail people in a democracy, it is the people who vote these government’s into power who fail themselves and erode democracy. The Free State’s story should not be determined by government, but by ordinary people who understand that their individual daily choices contribute to a collective consciousness.

Issued by Roy Jankielsohn, MPL and Leader of the official Opposition in the Free State Legislature, 5 July 2019