MEC BREDELL RESPONDS TO ANC
PEOPLE forget the Western Cape was once run by the ANC.
I got into office 10 years ago, after the people of the Western Cape had decided to kick out the ANC because of their continued broken promises, corruption and lack of service delivery.
When I joined the Western Cape government in 2009, I found that not one out of the 30 municipalities in the province had received a clean audit. Departments were in disarray and the chaos impacted negatively on the ability of municipalities to deliver even the most basic of services.
Fast-forward to 2018 and the DA-run provincial government managed to deliver 12 out of 30 municipalities with clean audits.
In total 26 out of the 30 municipalities in the Western Cape received unqualified audit reports.
Now, I am the first to acknowledge that a clean audit report doesn’t necessarily mean good service delivery. Multiple independent reports that look at service delivery in municipalities consistently point out that on every level, DA-run municipalities in the Western Cape outperform all other municipalities.
For example, the recent water and sanitation masterplan found that the sanitation backlog for all households in the Western Cape stood at 4.22% of households, which is the lowest in the country.
Secondly, approximately 4 000 schools in South Africa – in the areas managed by the ANC – still use pit latrines 25 years after democracy. Not a single school in the Western Cape today uses pit latrines.
I want to challenge the ANC, the readers and this newspaper to list the top 10 best-performing municipalities, if not the top 20, in the country. Then go and see which party runs those municipalities.
As DA chairperson in the Western Cape it is also my duty to implement the DA manifesto in our municipalities, as promised to the people who gave us their votes. The manifesto was roundly endorsed during the 2016 elections when the DA won with a two-thirds majority in the City of Cape Town as well as winning an outright majority in 21 out of 30 councils in the province.
The councils where the DA did not win an outright majority, I will leave it to the reader to determine how those councils perform.
In addition, as minister, I represent every citizen of this province whether they vote DA or not and my actions are open to scrutiny without fear or favour.
The truth is that even in DA-run municipalities, I have not hesitated to send in independent forensic investigators, no matter the outcome. When it comes to George, for example, the record shows that it was I who asked the Hawks to look into allegations of corruption in the council. And you call me biased?
It’s not me or the DA doing these investigations, these are specialised independent investigations. I have stated repeatedly, if your hands are in the till I will not hesitate to slam it shut regardless of the colour of your T-shirt.
I want to take a moment and touch on the issue of an alleged double standard between the treatment of the mayor of George, as opposed to a former member of mayoral council councillor.
This is a favourite bugbear of the Good party, too, who continue to claim that no action was taken against the councillor.
When it comes to the ANC in the Western Cape, the party has seen so many leadership scandals that the president couldn’t appoint a single ANC member from this province to his Cabinet following the 2019 elections.
If it was not for the appointment of the current leader of the Good party to the position of cabinet minister there would have been no person from the Western Cape in the Cabinet today. Isn’t that a massive indictment of the ANC Western Cape?
Books will be written that will show how many ANC MPLs and other senior provincial ANC leaders have approached me over the years looking for positions in the Western Cape promising they’d walk over to the DA. Every time I have told them they’re welcome but this party does not give away positions, one must earn it.