Response by ANC Leader of the Official Opposition in the Western Cape Legislature, Lynne Brown MPL, to Premier Helen Zille's State of the Province Address, Cape Town, February 25 2014

Mister Speaker. The first two decades of our freedom were dominated by the extraordinary spirit and magnanimity of our founding father, Tata Mandela. We give thanks for him. It is fitting to preface this address with the words of thanks offered by "Uncle Kathy", Ahmed Kathrada, at Tata's funeral: 

"We have been blessed that under the collective leadership of the ANC, we can proudly proclaim that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white'. We are fortunate that today we live in a noisy and lively democracy. We are eternally grateful that dignity has been restored to all South Africans. We are forever grateful that the lives of many are improving, although not enough yet. We are deeply grateful for a Constitution that encompasses all that is good in us and a constitutional order that protects our hard-won freedom. Finally, we are infinitely grateful that each and every one of us, whether we are African, White, Coloured or Indian, can proudly call ourselves South Africans."

Twenty years ago South Africans of all races and classes participated in the country's first free democratic election. The ANC led by President Nelson Mandela won an overwhelming victory in seven of the nine recently proclaimed new provinces - in the Western Cape, the majority of the people rejected Madiba's brand of reconciliatory transformation and voted for the National Party. Our first Premier was former apartheid police minister Mr Hernus Kriel. This is where the real Western Cape story begins...

There was a simple reason for this anomaly: Demographics. The majority of people in the Western Cape were Coloured and White - not naturally, mind you, not organically, but by apartheid design. There were laws that restricted Africans from coming here and allowed those Africans who were here to be "deported" to the Bantustans. (Does the Premier include these people when she speaks of "refugees"?)

Because of these laws, the Western Cape of 20 years ago was significantly better off than the other provinces - not by accident, not because the people were cleverer, but, again, by design. While you might not have thought so if you lived in Hanover Park or KTC at the time, we had more teachers and better-equipped schools, better health care, better social services, better policing - better just-about-everything - than the other provinces. We also had the most experienced civil servants, many of whom migrated here from other provinces to support the National Party. (Presumably these are not among the people the Premier calls, "refugees".)

When our Tata Madiba became President, one of his first tasks was to begin to dismantle the inequity, to shuffle the country's resources around to start to create a measure of fairness. As the best resourced of the provinces it followed that the Western Cape would have to chuck a little extra into the pot. This balancing act was always going to be hardest to sell here, in the face of a national opposition party essentially selling itself on the promise of continuing the patterns of the past.

The SOPA fairy-tale

Madam Premier, I listened to the good news proclaimed in your fairy-tale on Friday. Authors of fairy-tales have the license to be creative. They invent scenarios that inspire anxiety in their readers before the heroes come through with a happy ending.

The problem with fairy-tales is when they are prevented as fact, such as occurred in this House last week, and, in the absence of critical or insightful media, these "facts" take root in the minds of the people as the truth. The problem I had with the Premier's Friday fiction was that it deployed deliberate distortions to advance her agenda of creating a siege mentality in our province and our country.

The Premier's refugees

Premier, let's look briefly at the media response to your speech. There was a large amount of coverage about the point you raised about the Western Cape having to pay for the hordes of people who flock here from the Eastern Cape. One of your favourite refrains is to blame the influx of poor people to the Western Cape for any form of misery, mishap or maladministration in the province. You become so animated and outraged that it almost sounds credible.

Fibs about funding

On Friday, Madam Premier, you specifically alleged that the Western Cape received no compensation from national government for this clearly unwanted burden. You made it sound terribly unfair.

If you hadn't have been telling a fairy-tale, you'd have had to mention the 2013 budget review, that, in its explanatory memorandum to the division of revenue, goes into some detail on the allocation of substantial additional resources to provinces that had experienced an influx of citizens - such as the Western Cape. The document is freely available on the Internet, Madame Premier, and I recommend that you and the journalists who report on your speeches read it.

If you read the document you would learn that the provincial equitable share formula is reviewed and updated with new data, such as census and household survey data, annually. The formula is largely population-driven, the allocations capturing shifts in population across provinces that lead to changes in the relative demand for public services across these areas.

Taking credit for the work of others

Madam Premier, you would also have been pleased that some of the journalists present picked up uncritically on your red herring that national government is deliberately punishing the Western Cape for electing a DA government by withholding funds and/or delaying the rollout of projects. Your anxiety sounded plausible - to those who are not in the know. Yet your story was riddled with examples of taking Western Cape government credit for the delivery of projects actually delivered by national government. The (national) Department of Trade and Industry helped to facilitate the new Hi-Sense and expanded Tellumat factories in Atlantis. But the Premier seeks to claim the credit.

Ditto the new hospitals in Khayelitsha and Mitchell's Plain, projects the Premier inherited from us five years ago. Once again, Madam Premier, you gambled on an uncritical and uninformed media not scratching too deep.

The Western Cape mantle is slipping

The truth is that the Western Cape's mantle as the most efficient and best-serviced province is slipping on your guard, Madam Premier. Perhaps it is unfair to burden the leader of a national opposition party with a day job as a Premier. I'm not sure that there is anyone who could do justice to both. The Western Cape is suffering as a result... it's not as if your cabinet is overburdened with supermen (or women of any description, for that matter!).

Education

Let's start with education, an area which the Premier knows well and condescendingly concedes has been turned around by national government. One would expect the Western Cape to come first when it comes to matric results, wouldn't one? Five years ago we were coming first. So how did we fare last year: Pretty shoddily, actually! We came fourth.

Education/crime

As you were speaking on Friday, Madam Premier, children in the streets of Manenberg were yelling abuse at police whom they accused of beating them up while conducting searches. It was a school day, but hundreds of children were on the streets. Six people shot in the past few days, the gang war is raging - again. In the best-run province! Well, it depends where you sit, doesn't it?

Crime

If the Western Cape is the best-run province, how is it that in 2011/12 more murders were committed in Cape Town than in Johannesburg and Pretoria combined?

How is it possible that in the "best-run" province, last year, 303 police officers were attacked compared to the 77 in more populous Gauteng. Yet the MEC of Community Safety in the Western Cape, the Premier and the DA are intent on discrediting the police. Madam Premier, you forgot to include these numbers in your Friday fairy-tale!

And you forgot to mention the provincial curse of rape!

Crime & social dysfunctionality

Meanwhile, the picture that is emerging at the commission into policing in Khayelitsha is one of a dysfunctional and desperate community, without access to basic resources or jobs, and without much hope for the future. Policing cannot take place in a vacuum, without social and infrastructural support.

Children

Nearly every day we read horrendous stories of violence being committed against children, often, sexual violence. It seems that Western Cape children are particularly vulnerable. Madam Premier. You are failing to deal with the causes or effects. Too many of our children are on the streets, unsupervised, their lives endangered by predators. There is an urgent need to increase facilities in all of our townships to provide a greater level of protection for our children - particularly in their formative years.

Corruption

Five years ago, Madam Premier, I think you impressed many voters with your promises to investigate corruption and pursue offenders without fear or favour. This was an objective we supported. In fact, many of the investigations you inherited were initiated on our guard. So, where are all these corrupt ANC officials you have been shouting about, Madam Premier? Why do we get the sense that your investigations have failed, that your bark is more credible than your bite?

Human Settlements

Let's look at the delivery of housing... a critical area and one on which the Western Cape leads the nation in terms of backlog (read homelessness and suffering).

Between 2004 and 2009 the ANC-led government in the Western Cape oversaw the building of 75 000 houses and delivered 90 000serviced sites. With increased budgets, between 2009 and December 2013, the DA government has built approximately 60 000 houses and delivered 47 000 serviced sites. These are not distorted ANC figures, as you have claimed, Madam Premier; they are supplied by your own civil servants.

Jobs

According to Stats SA's labour market statistics, in the last year of recording the Western Cape lost 37 000 jobs. It was the only province that shed jobs in this period. The official unemployment figure in the Western Cape has slipped to 23.9% compared to the 24.9% national average. For a province that has always had the advantage of superior economic infrastructure, this figure is a shame. The couple of thousand new jobs you sought to take credit for in your speech on Friday, Madam Premier, were not only pitifully few, but - as already explained - included jobs created in Atlantis thanks to the DTI.

Sanitation

Mister Speaker. If there is a single indicator as to the depth of the inequity in this province then it has to be sanitation. According to City of Cape Town figures, approximately 80 000 households do not have a toilet. Is it any wonder that we have a Diarrhoea Season in Cape Town? That children in the Mother City die preventable deaths? Precious few of these households could be expected to support the Premier's party, so they may as well not exist. These are the desperadoes who have flung raw sewerage in our streets; the people at the bottom of the socio-economic pile who have no hope of ever entering the gates of the opportunity-society-for-some that the DA would construct. We don't support the strategies and tactics they have adopted but we do share their pain.

Conclusion

Madam Premier. It is reckless and unsustainable to defend privilege at the cost of providing basic facilities for the poor. Yes, you have power now in the Western Cape, but at what long-term cost? For how long will you be able to hold the poor at the gates? What real benefits will accrue to your children and grandchildren from the resentment and hostile division you are building today?

We have travelled for 20 years down our freedom road. There is no room for smugness and complacency; the journey is far from over. We have to build a country in which all people feel a valued part - and we are failing dismally to do that in the Western Cape. Instead, we are fomenting division and hatred. Yes, hatred. That's what the so-called pooh-flingers feel.

It is incumbent on all of us, regardless of the parties we represent, to build a sustainable home in which all our people can live dignified lives. We cannot build a sustainable home on a foundation of extreme levels of wealth and poverty. We cannot build a sustainable home for as long as our African compatriots feel unwelcome in our province. We cannot build a sustainable home on the expectation that the poor will sit back and accept their poverty, indefinitely. We cannot build a sustainable home on the back of a political strategy to divide rather than to unite. And influx control is not an option.

Yes, you have power in the Western Cape now, Madam Premier. But your pursuit of short-term gain for long-term pain is breathtakingly myopic. It is setting the Western Cape on an inevitable course of conflict that will ultimately disadvantage all of our people.

Issued by the ANC Western Cape, February 25 2014

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