Date: 02/03/2009

Source: Democratic Alliance

Title: DA: Zille: Speech the leader of the DA at the Cape Town Press Club

The DA is determined to win the Western Cape. With three weeks to go to the election, we are looking far stronger than our opponents. We are on track to win.

The ANC is rapidly losing support in the Western Cape. So is the ID. And their supporters are shifting to the DA, not COPE. By-election results prove it.

Last week, the DA won a landslide victory in Mitchell's Plain, in a ward that was previously held by the ID. We almost quadrupled our support from 2004 to just under 80%. Both the ANC and the ID haemorrhaged more than half their support from 2004, while COPE managed only 2.6% of the vote.

Alongside the DA's performance in by-elections in the Western Cape in December last year, when we recorded a marked increase in support among black voters in areas like Kosovo and Langa in Cape Town and among brown voters in Manenberg, these results show that South Africans of all races are placing their faith in the DA. They are turning away from the ANC and the ID, and they are paying little attention to COPE.

The DA is set to emerge as the biggest party in the Western Cape after the election. If our supporters turn out in force on Election Day, we can win the province with an outright majority.

There are two key reasons for our electoral prospects. Firstly, the ANC has split. Secondly, the DA has established a good record in local government - in the City of Cape Town, and in various other municipalities in the Western Cape and around the country.

Even though the ANC has split, and COPE has been formed, in every province the ruling party is still consumed with internal rifts and rivalries. In the Western Cape, the rifts cannot be bridged. Factionalism has paralysed the ANC. It has distracted the provincial government from its core functions: fighting crime, providing quality education and healthcare, and delivering services efficiently.

And the people of the Western Cape have suffered the consequences.

The Western Cape has the highest murder rate in the country, at 30.4 per 100 000 of the population. Ithas the highest incidence of drug-related crime, at 437.8 per 100 000 of the population. There was a 220% increase in drug-related crime in the province between 2001 and 2007, when crime statistics were last made available.

Under the ANC-run provincial government, the housing backlog has increased to a staggering 410 000 units; standards at our health care facilities have declined; our provincial roads have deteriorated; our environment has been endangered through poor development planning; and our coastal resources have been plundered while the ANC stands idly by.

Not enough learners are reaching benchmarked levels of literacy and numeracy. A study by the Western Cape Education Department released last year showed that the proportion of Grade 6 learners who achieved more than 50% for literacy stood at 44.8% in 2007. The results for numeracy were even more disappointing: the proportion of numerate Grade 6 earners decreased from 17.2% in 2005 to 14% in 2007.

The ANC's term in office has been marred by maladministration. Under the premiership of Ebrahim Rasool, the provincial government was involved in several dodgy deals, like the purchase and sale of Novell, the awarding of the tender to build and manage Chapman's Peak Drive, and the disposal of the Somerset Hospital site.

There was power abuse and corruption too, the most outrageous example of which was the Erasmus Commission, set up by the ANC provincial government at great expense to the taxpayer. When I addressed the Cape Town Press Club on the subject almost a year ago, I said that the Erasmus Commission was nothing more than an illegal attempt by the ANC to embarrass and discredit the DA. The Cape High Court subsequently ruled that the Commission was unlawful and unconstitutional. In so doing, it helped South Africa to pass a litmus test of constitutional democracy.

As well as setting up the ill-fated Erasmus Commission, Rasool also got rid of some of the best civil servants in the province and replaced them with friends and cronies.

There is evidence that under Lynne Brown's premiership, more of the same is going on.

Earlier this week, the DA revealed how the ANC is trying to push through property deals to the value of R55 million before the election, in an elaborate scam dressed up as black economic empowerment.

And in October last year, a few months after Brown replaced Rasool, the provincial government advertised 85 posts, mainly in the Office of the Premier, over eight pages in the Mail & Guardian. This sudden rash of appointments, just six months before an election, was part of cynical ploy by the ANC to rule from the grave by deploying public servants sympathetic to its agenda in senior positions months before it ceases to govern.

The ANC advertised these posts because it suspected six months ago that it was going to lose the Western Cape in the 2009 election. And that suspicion has turned to certainty. The ANC knows that it is going to lose the Western Cape to the DA. This is why, earlier this week, it was announced that responsibility for the N2 Gateway Housing Project would be transferred from provincial to national government. The ANC doesn't want the DA to make a success of the project when we take power on 22 April.

The ANC knows that we would have turned the project into a success story, because our track record in Cape Town shows exactly what we can - and will - achieve in the Western Cape.

In the City, we prefer to work than to boast, but it is important to counter the lies peddled by the likes of Allan Boesak, Simon Grindrod, and Mcebisi Skwatsha, and set out exactly what the DA-led multiparty government has done to make Cape Town more efficient, safer and cleaner.

Under the DA, the economy in Cape Town has grown and more opportunities have been created. Cape Town's gross geographic product increased by over 12% from R116.6 billion in 2005 - when the ANC governed - to R130.77bn in 2007, under DA rule. Unemployment declined from 20.7% in 2005 to 17.9% in 2007, which is below the national average of 23.2%.

Under the DA, government has become more efficient. Within a year of taking over the City, we cut debt by nearly R1bn. That allowed us to extend the capital available for service delivery by 15%. And we have put the money to good use: for example, we have begun supplying electricity to informal settlements that fall under Eskom's jurisdiction - such as Happy Valley and Site B Khayelitsha - areas to which the ANC sought to block electricity provision.

We have been able to write off debt for the very poor to the value of R1.5-billion. We have speeded up service delivery, we offer free basic services for all, and we are busy installing electricity and water in the areas that did not receive them when the ANC was in government.

We have tripled the investment in infrastructure that benefits the public and supports the economy from an average of R1bn per year between 2002 and 2006, under the ANC, to R3.1 bn in 2008.

We have doubled the average annual rate of housing delivery, from the ANC's average of 3 000 per year between 2002 and 2006 to an average of 7 000 per year between 2006 and 2008. And we have introduced fairer housing allocation procedures.

Under the DA, Cape Town has become safer. Crime in the CBD has gone down by 90% since 2000. Capetonians now feel safer: 3 500 residents have moved back into inner city apartments.

Under the DA, Cape Town has become cleaner - clean and transparent in government, clean and beautiful in appearance. Under the ANC a minimum 30% BEE quota applied to tenders, which was used to advance the economic interests of bidders with top political connections. In 2006 the DA scrapped the policy and implemented an open equity programme that encourages greater numbers of bidders to apply. The result has been a 10% increase in the number of contracts awarded to BEE companies.

Cape Town is clean both figuratively and literally: In 2007, Cape Town was awarded the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism's annual Cleanest Metro award.

The ANC brought Cape Town to the brink of collapse, but the DA saved it and we are busy turning it into a success. And we will turn the Western Cape into a success, too, by implementing the policies that bring to life to our vision of an open, opportunity society.

We plan to use the powers which the Constitution gives to provincial governments to make their own laws, and which provinces under ANC control have surrendered to national government.

Our top five priorities in government in the Western Cape are to expand opportunity through policies that create jobs and grow the economy; improve the quality of education; deliver better healthcare services; make the province safe by catching criminals, and then prosecuting, convicting and punishing them; and provide a safe, reliable and affordable road and public transport system.

In seeking to win the Western Cape, and implement our open, opportunity-driven policies, we have a very clear purpose: we want to show what real co-operative governance between local authorities and a province can achieve. A victory in the Western Cape will allow us to do that. My decision to run as the DA's Premier candidate has nothing to do with "abandoning" the City - or foregoing the opportunity of building a real bastion of DA-government there - as one analyst recently claimed. It is about showing what DA-led provincial and local governments can achieve when they work together.

Both the local and provincial spheres of government are closely inter-linked in many ways (such as housing, transport, economic development and planning) and we can attain exceptional outcomes if we all pull together, rather than in opposite directions. Despite improvements in recent months, we are nowhere close to optimal co-operative governance between the DA-led City of Cape Town and the ANC-run provincial administration.

In fact, for the last three years the Province has actually worked to undermine the City's delivery programme in housing, in community safety, in public transport, in tourism and other crucialareas. The only conclusion I can come to is that the ANC would rather have poor people suffer than allow the DA to offer services optimally.

The Province has still not granted the City of Cape Town housing accreditation, which would transfer authority to approve housing projects and subsidies to the City. With full accreditation, the City would be able to approve housing projects in 2 to 3 months, compared to the current provincial Housing Department's time of 8 to 18 months. When the DA, or a DA-led coalition, takes control of the Western Cape after 22 April, we will move to grant housing accreditation to the City, which has a more efficient administration than Province. We will transfer former Housing Board Land to the City, and focus on getting the remaining provincial housing projects outside of Cape Town working properly. We will also ensure speedy planning approvals for housing projects and timeous transfer of infrastructure funding to the City.

The ANC controlled provincial Department of Community Safety has undermined the City of Cape Town on a number of key initiatives. During the outbreak of xenophobic violence in 2008, it refused to take the lead role in supporting about 20 000 displaced foreign nationals, even when the situation was declared a provincial disaster. Instead, the City's disaster management team had to shoulder over R100 million in costs, and the City had to provide over 90% of the accommodation for displaced persons. The Province has also put obstacles in the way of a co-ordinated response to drug abuse in Cape Town. Instead of working with the City to shut down drug dens, the Province has instead attacked me in my capacity as Mayor, going so far as to arrest me unlawfully in Mitchells Plain during an anti-drug dealer protest in 2007.

As for public transport, the most serious problem for the City is the Province's inability to run the Minibus Taxi Permit Office. This has resulted in about 10 000 unlicensed taxis operating in Cape Town. Together with a total failure of law enforcement by Province, this has surrendered Cape Town's public transport to mob rule, factionalism and protection rackets for unlicensed taxi operators in the National Taxi Association (NTA). Members of the NTA have already burnt tyres in the city centre in violent protest against our new integrated rapid transport system, which will bring all taxis, buses and trains under the control of one private company. And they are threatening more violence and intimidation.

The DA believes that if the police are unable to maintain law and order should the NTA go on the rampage again, then it will be necessary to bring in the army to enable the state to fulfil its primary duty of protecting life and property. The last round of taxi violence was marked by death and destruction of property that the police were unable to prevent. It is time for the Province to support our stance because our first responsibility is to secure the safety of hundreds of thousands of commuters every day. They must be protected from the violence and intimidation of taxi warlords and rogue operators.

But instead of offering us this support, and taking a firm stand against the NTA's violence and intimidation, the ANC in provincial government has, in some instances, sought to curry favour with dissident taxi associations in order to score political points. This week, provincial Safety and Security officials failed to arrive for a planning meeting with the City after taxi bosses threatened to disrupt the election.

When the DA wins the Western Cape, we will significantly increase enforcement capacity to deal with taxis, and work with the City to introduce more stringent laws (especially impounding vehicles), to bring greater order to the industry.

These are just a few examples of how co-operative governance would improve people's lives. They show why it is so important that we achieve our goals in this election, to drive forward the next phase of realignment: the 2011 local government elections, in which we plan to win cities and towns across South Africa. If the DA and a coalition of opposition forces could pull off victories in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Kimberley and many other smaller towns, we would govern the economic heartland of the country. And if we continue to govern well, and continue to show up the ANC, then our momentum will be unstoppable.

In the final phase of the realignment process, the DA will form the core of a national coalition government in 2014.

The DA is the party for each and every South African. We are growing in every single community in the complex cultural mosaic that makes up the Rainbow Nation. Our public representatives-be they white, black, or brown -do not represent the group they come from. We each represent all of the people.

The race in the Western Cape is between the ANC and the DA. But it is a race that we currently lead and that we are going to win. The ANC is desperate and in decline. The DA is growing. We have a powerful momentum on our side.

In this election, the voters of the Western Cape have a clear choice.

This province can be chained to the ANC party machine. It can be stuck with the same failed policies dictated on high from Pretoria. It can suffer more underspending, more cronyism and corruption, and more failed delivery.

Or, alternatively, the Western Cape can choose a new path. It can renew the mandate of the voters for a real alternative to the ANC. It can choose bold new ideas and real solutions that work. It can choose local leadership with real accountability to the voters.

It can choose the path of the DA's open, opportunity society - the path of freedom, prosperity, and good governance.

We believe that the choice is clear. It is a choice between failure and success.