Premier Helen Zille is political disaster and is using the Western Cape storm to deflect attention from her own political storm

8 June 2017

The decision by the Western Cape Provincial Government to close schools and also encourage businesses to close was clearly an overreaction for a storm that has been part of the Western Cape weather like forever. Every year children from the Cape Flats walk to school in this type of rain and we suspect that Premier Helen Zille had another agenda with these closures that have cost the economy millions and may workers their jobs. Zille was trying to distract attention away from her own political problems with the shut down, no matter how much this was going to cost Capetonians.  It is most unfortunate that lives were lost but clearly this cannot be used to justify the closures, as these deaths were not due to people being washed away by rains.

The Job of the Government is to mitigate disasters that occur, but not to shut down life as we know it, and cause further hardships for people. This gimmick of closure and press campaigns is just a further illustration of a premier that runs a province as a PR project with the media and does work to overcome and fix the problems that exist.

This forced but unnecessary shut down will have huge financial implications for the province in these trying times of a possible economic recession. This will likely lead to job losses and economic decay for the poor majority. This ill informed decision has exposed the provincial administration that it has no clue how to run a province .They are only milking the legacy of Apartheid that left unequal development but have done nothing to really provide leadership in this province.

The Premier has shown exactly how white her outlook of the world is, by only declaring a disaster for a little wind and rain, to give it special attention. Sure everybody liked the idea of a day off in the middle of the week and we must ere on the side of caution. But herein lays the contradiction, of how the Premier governs when it comes to black lives and white lives. All areas of crisis must be prioritised, not only those that affect white lives.

When white people are going to get a bit wet and there is danger of a branch being blown onto their Mercedes then it is a disaster. But when poor people have to brave the gangs shooting at them on their way to work, or young children get killed and woman abused then no special measures are put in place to protect them. This double standards shows exactly the disregard that Zille and here white cronies in the Provincial Government have for black people. Somehow we have to get it into their heads that black lives also matter , as coloured and African and Indian peoples daily reality, resembles a war zone.

Today government workers were on full alert to remove twigs from the driveways of the fancy suburbs, but the Premier has left the Asbestos that is poisoning learners in Uitsig High School for months and is refusing to clean it. Many kids are without food today because the school feeding scheme is their only meal. Many kids are at home unsupervised today, because their parents are at work and the schools are closed. But Zille does not understand this as she causes a crisis in poor communities because she has no appreciation for the challenges of the Cape Flats. White people can work from home and their kids have their lessons on computers, but black communities do not have that luxury. A day lost is a day’s pay lost, and we need every day’s money to feed our kids and extended families.

The premier was looking for something to distract the people’s attention from the chaos in the DA, and this storm, gave her the perfect opportunity. She has caused the same dissent in the DA that Cde Jacob Zuma has caused in the ANC; she has also used state capture in the same way to enrich her son from government, which Zuma has used to enrich his son. Zille is as Skelm as Zuma, and she is using this storm to cover her tracks, when she is the real disaster in Western Cape.

Premier Zille is the real storm in the Western Cape that we need protection from, as she gives Tafelberg land to her friends at low prices. We can handle a bit of wind and rain, because that is part of our daily lives in Cape Town but we need protection from racist who support colonialism and pander to white interest, whilst disregarding black lives.

Under Premier Zille and Mayor De Lille we have daily and permanent disasters like lack of water, crime and violence being out of control, traffic is gridlocked and inequality that is increasing. But nothing is done about that, instead we both Premier Helen Zille and Mayor Patricia De Lille working hard to defend white interest in this part of the world.'

Issued by Tony Ehrenreich, Western Cape Secretary, COSATU, 8 June 2017