Premier – You can’t fool all the people all the time

5 March 2020

Allow me to begin by stating that as the Democratic Alliance (DA) we are committed to working with anybody who is prepared to put our province first. We love KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and it is heart-breaking to see the chaos it is in.

Yesterday, during his State of the Province Address, Premier SihleZikalala was in the unique position where he could have shown real commitment to rolling out clean governance in our province. The people of our province were looking to the Premier for hope and for solutions to the problems we have in KZN.

Our Municipalities

Municipalities are the lifeblood of any province. If they do not work, then the province does not work. If basic services are not delivered to people, then the province collapses.

Yesterday the Premier could have announced changes that would stop the further collapse of our municipalities, including the implementation of Section 139 of the Constitution. Instead, we got no real concrete steps as to how he intends to get his government to turn around the situation.

With nine municipalities under administration, including KZN’s capital city, it is clear that the Premier and his COGTA Department have no handle on the situation. That only one municipality in our province managed to receive an unqualified audit also means that every single other municipality in this province is in major trouble.
In uMsunduzi the governing party has literally reduced the capital city to a rubbish bin with litter and sewerage streaming down the streets. Then there are the rats which are so big that they are the ones going around in gangs scaring humans and spreading disease. Premier, yesterday you said that the landfill and refuse situation in Pietermaritzburg had stabilized but this is untrue, of 19 refuse vehicles only two are operational and this is only sometimes.

The Premier has also forgotten the people of Ugu. Yesterday he spoke about people contacting him on Facebook. The DA has thousands of requests from the people from Ugu on Facebook too. Yet, today, there are still almost a million people who do not know whether they will have water tomorrow. Where schools are shut down on a regular basis and children sent home simply because there is no water. Where clinics cannot operate because there is no water. Where tourism – the back bone of this community – has been crippled and thousands of jobs lost as a result. And where – despite this highly documented water crisis, the Premier and his COGTA MEC continue to sit on their hands rather than implement Section 139 (b) which the DA has been calling for, for years now.

The question is - who is being protected in Ugu? Premier you misled the province yesterday when you spoke about Ugu having water tankers. While there may be 30 tankers, only five work and none of those five are in the field. You also spoke highly of 92 jojo tanks in Ugu. But what you failed to mention is that not one is working because they are sitting in the depot because there are no stands.

Towards the end of last year, Members of the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature, along with a delegation of National Council of Province (NCOP) Members, conducted oversight inspections of several municipalities in the province, seemingly in an attempt to unearth the challenges they are facing and set them on the right path.

One of these visits was to the ailing Mooi-Mpofana municipality. This municipality has received disclaimers from the Auditor-General for the past two years running and has been under provincial administration since December 2017.
Mooi-Mpofana was once a thriving farming region in KZN. It was also the centre of a major textile industry, providing many jobs within the community. Premier – yesterday you spoke about revitalizing this industry and the DA sincerely hopes that this municipality will be one of the first places you prioritize.

Regrettably, Mooi Mpofana is not an isolated case. The home of our province’s capital city, uMsunduzi municipality remains devastated due to the failure to hold its councillors accountable, failure to institute consequence management measures, failure to exercise oversight over management. This after years of opposition parties appealing for intervention. The Administrator deployed by the ANC couldn’t break the crippling political deadlock there. So what did the ANC do? They sent him to Ugu, a municipality which is hanging on by a thread.

Then there is the Newcastle Municipality where residents have gone on the rampage, barricading roads and looting and burning down shops in Osizweni and Madadeni townships over service delivery. This while the Mayor refuses to meet with them. The question Premier is this – what role are you playing to assist the citizens of these municipalities?

Forensic Reports

Yesterday, during his State of the Province Address, the Premier could have made the difference, moving one step closer towards properly functioning municipalities with running water, sanitation and refuse collection and decent roads. But he did not. This while greedy politicians continue to feed at the trough that local government has become.
We know that there are forensic reports that point out the corrupt politicians and officials in municipalities. Yet the Premier was proud to tell us yesterday that just two people have been arrested for their behaviour.

Premier - how can the people of KZN have faith that things will get better when all that happens is that politicians, your comrades are just moved from one position to another but never dealt with? Premier – it is on your watch that not one politician that has been dealt with for stealing taxpayer’s money.

As the Democratic Alliance we have for years suggested implementing strict controls around accountability and life style audits for politicians. It is not hard. We have done it in the Western Cape and there is no reason why it cannot be done in KZN. While we welcome that you took on our suggestion of skills audits for officials we hope you are able to at least keep this promise and we will monitor at next year’s SOPA if you did so or if you’re just talking about it.

Proper governance

The situation in the DA-led Western Cape could not be more different to that of KZN. The province continues to produce the best results, with 79% in clean audits and the lowest irregular expenditure and fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

In the DA-led Western Cape we have listened to what the people want and we have delivered. The people of the Western Cape asked us to act against corruption and we did, launching lifestyle audits for all cabinet members in that province at the beginning of the year.

They asked us to cut the frills and spend more on services and we listened. Through a second review of the provincial ministerial handbook, the DA has created even further savings on top of the hundreds of millions we have already saved over the last 10 years.

Agriculture

The DA is extremely disappointed in the Premiers plans and details on Agriculture in KZN. It appears that he does not have a concrete understanding of the issues facing the sector and the potential that it has to develop our rural areas.

Agriculture is imperative for food security, job creation and rural development. Yesterday’s State of the Province offered little to no detail and was simply a reiteration of the same plan used for the past 25 years. This while the province continues to be activity-orientated in its approach to development rather than outcome-orientated – with hand-outs rather than developing and building capacity.

Then there is the issue of rural safety. The DA is far from satisfied with the Premier and MEC’s attitude towards this and will be calling for a debate on farm murders and rural safety in general. On a positive note, we welcome the support for the Cannabis industry. There must however be proper regulation around the industry before KZN dives head first into handing out permits.

In KZN, a DA-led government would focus on the following critical agricultural issues, amongst others:
- Building capacity to tackle biosecurity related threats by securing our borders, capacitating provincial veterinary services and utilising technology to increase preventative activities
- Directly subsidising rural safety initiatives such as farm watches and farm patrols
- Working with farming associations to build public private partnerships aimed at developing emerging farmers. This can be done through conditional grant funding
- Transferring all land that is leased by small scale farmers into full title ownership
- Establishing a research and development fund to prepare our agricultural sector for the impacts of climate change
- Restructuring the existing internship and bursary programme to include new skills such as robotics, AI and agricultural engineering
- Implementing a full skills audit and life style audits for all Agriculture officials
- Building smaller dams in rural areas to assist with water insecurity and investing in other water infrastructure for rural farmers
- Ensuring that we improve the number of broken tractors (currently only 61% are working) and;
- Intensifying the programme to build farm workers proper housing with electricity and water

Education

It is interesting to note that the Premier did not mention that the budget for Education has been cut and that this may well translate into massive job losses, affecting critical teaching posts and worsening the delivery of quality Education.

Then there are the more than 300 unqualified teachers who operated illegally in our schools and were paid millions when qualified educators sit at home. Other issues which we challenge the Premier on today are;
- The sexual offenders list – this was ignored while KZN has one of the highest numbers of sexual offences against learners by Educators, as confirmed by SACE
- While the Premier lauds progress in Early Childhood development (ECD) in our province, there is no legal mandate for the migration from DSD basic Education. In other words, the move is illegal and;
- KZN’s real matric pass rate is just over 39%, a crisis that the Premier did not speak on.

Health

The Premier also did not touch on health sufficiently given KZN’s huge medico-legal bill and the failure of our province to adequately provide health services.

It is clear that the Premier is out of touch when it comes to the healthcare needs of KZN’s ordinary citizens.  In the DA-led Western Cape, we have listened to the people. In Grabouw, residents told us that needed longer clinic operating hours because they were having to travel to Caledon if there was an emergency at night. And we delivered. Today this local clinic operates 24/7, and what’s more, its facilities are being upgraded.

But what has to be the most telling difference is that while KZN faces R12 billion in medico-legal bills the Western Cape’s current medico-legal claims currently stand at R110 million.

Gender Based Violence

Our province experienced some of the worst incidents of Gender Based Violence (GBV) last year. Yet the Premier failed to mention any interventions that his government will be taking.

In the Western Cape, the people told the DA that they were not safe due to drugs, gangs and gender-based violence. And we launched a comprehensive, province-wide Safety Plan aimed at halving the murder rate.

When it comes to the scourge of Gender Based Violence (GBV) the DA has also taken the fight beyond 16 days of Activism through the facilitation of a Domestic Violence Act Compliance Forum all year round. This aims to ensure that the police can competently and efficiently respond to cases of domestic violence, in turn safeguarding our women and children. In addition, for the first time in the history of the Western Cape, government officials are being tasked with designing a performance indicator, which will measure how provincial government is addressing GBV.

Jobs

Almost one in every three people in KZN is unemployed. Yesterday the Premier mentioned a few programs for youth empowerment. The problem is nobody ever knows how these programs are accessed, how funding is allocated and what the procedures are. We just hear about individuals that have been recipients - and if the past is anything to go by there is no prize for guessing that it is only certain ANC-connected youth who are able to get these funds.

In the DA-led Western Cape, the people asked us to focus on jobs because they want a better life and a better future. In the recently released national government stats released, it was announced that the Western Cape created 24 000 new jobs for the quarter, more than half of the net jobs created in our country. The DA is South Africa’s ‘jobs province’.

They also asked for a government that is accessible because they are sick and tired of departments that push you from pillar to post. We delivered and we now host Open Government First Thursdays, where every single resident of the province has access to the full Cabinet and senior government officials every month. Since our first event in August last year, we’ve held 1244 meetings with residents, and have resolved 80% of all the matters raised with us.

They called on us to cut more business red tape and in August last year, we launched a pilot Economic War Room which has brought City and Province officials and private sector players together on a weekly basis to address burning problems using a world-class methodology.

The road to recovery

The road to economic recovery in KZN begins with the creation of a capable state – one which is based on competency, accountability, consequence management and ultimately enforcing relevant legislation to achieve this. The DA in KZN has continually been at the forefront when it comes to insisting that the province will never progress without this.

The dramatic 10% drop in the ANC’s support in KZN during the May elections should be sufficient warning that the people of our province are sick and tired of broken promises. Perhaps, former American President, Abraham Lincoln put it best when he spoke about deception, saying ‘You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time’.

If KZN is to begin overcoming the challenges it faces and start realising its potential, then the ANC needs to take ownership for the monster that it has created so that we can move forward with solutions. Where the Premier and his ANC Executive show the political will needed to implement change, they will find a willing working partner in the DA.

The DA remains committed to bringing accountability to this ANC-run province. Across KZN we continue to work hard to show the people that we are a viable alternative, that we care, that we offer workable solutions and that we are in fact South Africa and KZN’s only real opposition.

Issued by Mbali Ntuli, DA KZN Spokesperson on CoGTA, 5 March 2020