Winde promises 800,000 jobs in the Cape
● Western Cape premier Alan Winde has unveiled an ambitious plan for the province in his bid for a second term in office.
The DA premier candidate launched his party’s provincial manifesto in Paarl yesterday. He pledged to create 800,000 new jobs, fight crime with 1,300 law enforcement officers, and establish rural safety and K9 units.
He told hundreds of cheering party members that his government planned to cut load-shedding by four stages, build more schools faster and deliver quality education for all.
The DA hopes to deliver a world-class public health service, run a clean, innovative government and push for provincial control of policing, transport and ports.
In this regard, the provincial government has already introduced the Western Cape Powers Bill.
Winde said the DA would create 800,000 job opportunities over the next few years to maintain the province’s upward employment trajectory. The plan is to invest heavily in infrastructure, cut red tape that gets in the way of doing business, grow investor confidence, promote tourism and ensure the agricultural sector remains a major job creator.
“To further our job creation efforts, we must invest in our youth.”
In this regard, Winde said the provincial government would invest R2.96bn over three years in youth opportunity interventions such as the job seekers’ travel vouchers, the YearBeyond and Chrysalis Academy programmes to ensure young people have the right skills, the right qualifications and the right experience to become part of the economy.
Winde pledged to fight crime with 1,300 law enforcement advancement plan (Leap) officers, rural safety units and K9 units, and to use technology and data to maximise limited resources.
“We have some really cool technology which is making a difference in our fight against crime — like ShotSpotter (gunshot detection technology), body cams and drones,” he said.
“Our Leap programme, run in partnership with the City of Cape Town, was launched in 2020 with 500 law enforcement officers deployed to four priority areas. Today, 1,300 Leap officers are on patrol, day and night, in 13 priority areas.
“Armed with data, evidence and backed by technology, our women and men in blue work around the clock to fight and prevent crime.”
The result, he said, is that Leap officers have made more than 27,000 arrests and have taken more than 554 illegal firearms off the streets.
On energy, Winde said the answer to SA’s electricity crisis was to reduce dependence on Eskom by allowing independent power producers to become part of the solution.
“Our pledge to the residents of the Western Cape is to cut load-shedding by four stages and to eventually end power cuts — for good.”
In 2022, the DA-led Western Cape government established the Western Cape Energy Council to drive alternative and independent energy production solutions to ease and eventually end load-shedding in the province.
“Central to our plan is our Western Cape energy resilience programme, which is supporting municipalities across the province to implement renewable energy projects.
“So far, this initiative has seen the successful request for information from more than 100 potential energy generation projects.”
Winde spoke about the devolution of powers from the national government to the province, saying basic functions such as policing, public transport, ports and the logistics sector had been allowed to fall apart by the national government.
“That is why the DA has a plan to fight for more provincial powers. Our pledge ahead of the election is to push for management of policing, transport and the ports — all key requirements for a prosperous, modern society.
“This can be done by devolving these powers to provincial and local governments, which have the capacity to do a better job than the national government.”
This was why the DA was pushing to have the Western Cape Powers Bill passed in the provincial legislature, he said.
The bill’s objective is to empower the provincial government to “fix what the ANC-run national government has broken”.