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The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Northern Cape has more questions than answers regarding the funding of the R500 million Sol Plaatje project. This comes after having received a response to a Public Access to Information Act (PAIA) application, detailing the breakdown of where the money was sourced from for the project (see response here).

According to the response received, the full funding amount of R571 million comes from the Department of Roads and Public Work’s Expanded Public Works (EPWP) programme and road infrastructure budget (R167 million); COGHSTA’s emergency housing grant (R71 million), its consolidated capital grant agreement (R144 million), its Human Settlements Development Grant (R106 million); and Sol Plaatje itself (R83 million).

What specifically concerns the DA is a glaring omission regarding touted Covid-19 funding. Do we need to remind the premier, Dr Zamani Saul, that he verbally indicated during the press conference held on the 12th April 2021, that a portion of the half a billion rand was in fact being taken from Covid-19 funds? He implied that the province had a handle on the pandemic and that it was deemed justifiable to utilise these funds for Sol Plaatje (see video clip here).

Nowhere, however, is this now reflected. Instead, it is now being bandied about as a false rumour. We can only suspect that this is an attempted cover-up because of the grave misjudgement in even considering utilising pandemic funds to bail out a failed municipality.

After all, since the press conference in question, Covid-19 cases in the province escalated, with the Northern Cape being punted as one of the provinces to have initiated the third wave. The province has also exhibited high excess deaths, high test positivity rates and low recovery rates.

The DA will not let the matter rest.

Sol Plaatje is a municipality on the brink of collapse. R500 million is a lot of money. We cannot simply accept at face value that this money was properly budgeted for and that it will be properly directed to where it is intended to go.

We will submit further questions to be able to hold government accountable for the Sol Plaatje project. Transparency must start at the funding and filter through into procurement and all the way into delivery.

Issued by The DA