This ANC local government has sabotaged your future

11 June 2016

Note to Editors: The following remarks were made today by the DA Leader, Mmusi Maimane MP, during the unveiling of the DA youth bus in Nelson Mandela Bay. Maimane was joined by DA Mayoral Candidate for Nelson Mandela Bay, Athol Trollip. 

In less than two months’ time we will go to make our marks on the ballot papers to select local governments for our towns and cities.

What we decide on 3 August is of huge importance for two reasons: Firstly, because local government elections are often an indication of what will happen three years later when we vote for national and provincial governments.

But more importantly, local governments are where communities deal directly with the people they voted for. It’s the coal face of service delivery.

Local governments provide services like water, electricity and sanitation. They take care of the roads, the streetlights, the buses, the trains.

But most of all, local governments determine how a city is run. They look after the money and decide where to spend it. If they do this well, the city works. And if the city works, then businesses want to be there and jobs are created.

But if they don’t do it well – if they waste money, lose money, steal money – then businesses go elsewhere. Then the local economy shrinks and the city loses jobs.

I don’t have to tell you this, but this local government – the City of Nelson Mandela Bay under Danny Jordaan and the ANC – does not run this city well. In fact, this Metro is run extremely poorly.

When Danny Jordaan and his government are asked about their poor performance, they always have a hundred excuses. But let’s quickly take a step back and look what they have to work with here in Nelson Mandela Bay. 

The reality is, this city has everything it could possibly ask for to stimulate investment and growth. The region has two big harbours, a large Industrial Development Zone, road and rail networks, an airport, wind farms, universities, and miles and miles of beautiful coastline.

It also has thousands of unemployed people just waiting for opportunities to work. Why then is Nelson Mandela Bay not a thriving hub of industry and tourism?

I’ll tell you why. It is because this city has been sabotaged by its corrupt and incompetent local government. They have taken a city that has so much to offer, and they have destroyed its economy.

Every year, the Auditor-General releases a report on how well or badly our local governments look after public money. If you ever want to see whether your government is corrupt, you go straight to the part of the report that deals with Unauthorised, Fruitless and Wasteful Expenditure.

In the latest report we see that this number for Nelson Mandela Bay Metro was R457 million. For the 2014/2015 financial year. That’s almost half a billion Rand that should have gone towards better services, better infrastructure and better maintenance.

In other words, half a billion Rand that belonged to the people of this city.

Just to put this into perspective, in the DA-run City of Cape Town the figure for Unauthorised, Fruitless and Wasteful Expenditure for the same financial year was zero.

And that’s the difference between a DA-run city and an ANC–run city. We respect public money, and we spend it where we should.

But we’re here today to talk about youth opportunities and jobs. So what does this waste and corruption do to a city’s ability to create jobs?

Again, I’ll let the numbers speak. Unemployment in the City of Cape Town is at 23%. Which, for us in the DA is too high, and we are working hard at bringing that number down.

But here in Nelson Mandela Bay, unemployment is more than 10% higher, at 33.3%. And when you look at people under the age of 35, that percentage jumps all the way up to 47%. Almost half the young people in this city can’t find jobs.

And that is a direct result of a city that is run so poorly that it cannot attract the investment that creates jobs.

It is time to change that. It is time to say to this local government that has sabotaged your dreams of a better future: “Enough. You had your chance and you blew it.” And it is time to vote for a local government that will turn Nelson Mandela Bay into the city it was meant to be.

We’re also here today to launch the DA’s Youth Bus. Over the next two months, this bus is going to take our message of growth and jobs to every corner of this metro. Your future mayor, Athol Trollip, will speak to thousands of young people like you about what the DA can do to open opportunities once we are in government here.

That includes assisting young entrepreneurs, because they are the people who will create the jobs our country needs.

It includes providing internships and apprenticeships to young work-seekers.

It includes the establishment of Opportunity Centres, where young job-seekers and entrepreneurs can access support.

But first we need your help in getting rid of the government that has let you down, and hiring a government that will work for you. We need five years to show the people of Nelson Mandela Bay we mean business.

If we disappoint you in those five years, then by all means fire us too. But first give us a chance to show you what we can do.

This city has so much to offer, and you are its future. It’s time you took your future into your own hands.

Thank you.

Issued by the DA, 11 June 2016