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Northern Cape Premier, Dr Zamani Saul, missed a golden opportunity in his State of the Province Address to focus on the immediate issues facing the people of this province.

His almost tunnel-like focus on distant mega-projects is not felt by ordinary citizens, who cannot wait for years to see an improvement in the quality of their lives.

Over R85 million was already spent on the Boegoeberg project to date, but the sale of land has yet to go through, and the Namaqua people are also aggrieved by a lack of public participation. In the meantime, the Premier’s commitment that, come the end of 2021, there will not be a single pothole in and around Kimberley, was not achieved.

The ultimate collapse of municipalities is also occurring now, under the Premier’s watch. Eskom succeeded in freezing Renosterberg municipality’s bank account due to outstanding debt owed by the municipality to the power utility. In effect, salaries have not been paid and services don’t get delivered.

The DA has been lamenting the non-adherence to Eskom payment agreements for years, calling for funds owed to Eskom to be ring-fenced and for real-time monitoring of payments. Renosterberg is one of many municipalities in the province defaulting on its Eskom payments. We can only wonder which municipality Eskom will target next.

It is not for nothing that the Public Protector expressed shock at the state of Kimberley and the lack of leadership here.

We have many, many service delivery problems relating to water, sewerage, roads, health care, education, safety and more in the province, yet the core problems are not addressed.

Operational ambulances decreased from 87 ambulances to 75, with another 73 being non-operational yet the province wants to focus on a digital dispatch system instead of first securing the repairs and maintenances of ambulances.

We don’t have funds to procure adequate pharmaceuticals and have recently seen stock-outs of HIV test kits, Syphilis rapid test kits, STI-related pharmaceuticals and even medication for prostate cancer, yet the province wants to invest in a massive storage warehouse on the site of the new mental hospital, where valuable assets are lost and patients abscond because of inadequate security.

The province’s high drop-out rate is at a ridiculous 44.7% between Grade 10 and Grade 12, because the department fails to create a safe, physical environment that is needed for quality teaching. There are still almost 30 schools made out of asbestos contaminated material. As many as 26 classrooms at Homevale High School were broken into between September 2021 and October 2021, academic materials were destroyed, padlocks and doors were damaged, and items from taps to projectors were stolen. The Williston Hostel has been rendered a shell of a structure because authorities failed to act when the facility was being plundered.

SAPS has an unacceptably low number of non-operational vehicles to police, patrol and facilitate case investigation in the province. Despite gender-based violence being a priority, Victim Friendly Facilities are under-resourced and misused. And still, almost two years down the line, the appointment of a Provincial Police Commissioner has not been made.

The health department is run by a squad of acting managers, while there are also other departments that have had acting Heads of Departments for years.

An improvement in clean audits is superficial when considering that 10% of this year’s budget was used to pay for last year’s services, and when we see an increase in irregular expenditure from R13.31 billion in 2019/20 to R18.24 billion in 2020/21, with 98% of the previous year’s expenditure not being investigated.

Yet, no decisive action is taken against those implicated in non-compliance of the PFMA, despite this being criminally prosecutable by the law. No wonder so many financial crimes continue to go under the radar in the Northern Cape.

Residents don’t deserve to have corruption steal their hopes of a better life, they deserve an economy that presents opportunity.

The Premier, however, was silent on how he plans to navigate the potential dealbreaker that we are currently faced with in the renewable energy sector.

The province’s power grid has reached capacity and bids beyond 2023 are already being turned down. Unless we see a huge investment in the form of power lines and pylons in this province, more electricity will not be able to be moved from the Northern Cape to provinces where demand is greatest, in turn placing a ceiling on the further development of wind and solar projects, and on further jobs.

As the renewable energy hub of the province, we are also concerned that the province is not harnessing the potential of the renewable energy recycling sector to further develop the economy, despite renewable energy waste, like solar panels contributing to millions of tonnes of waste that this sector is generating across the country each year.

The DA has questions about the State Construction Company, which will work hand in hand with the embattled Roads & Public Works department and will fall under the banner of Northern Cape Economic Development Agency (NCEDA), which itself is in dire straits and has a projected shortfall of more than R113 million.

We cannot afford to throw good money after bad at a time when half a billion people of this province are dependent on grants and one out of every two people in the province is unemployed and has given up hope of ever becoming economically active.

The alarm has been sounded in the Northern Cape. This state of the province was an SOS and unfortunately, we are headed for the “Same Old Story” until 2024, when citizens can rather opt for the DA’s narrative of proven good governance and success stories instead.

Issued by Harold McGluwa MPL - DA Northern Cape Provincial Leader