ANC Western Cape can't see truth from political fantasy

19 February 2015

Tomorrow Premier Helen Zille will deliver a state of the province address in the Western Cape that will outline how the best-run Province in South Africa continues to deliver on its mandate of good governance.

It is an uncomfortable truth for Marius Fransman, and his band of supporters who marched to the legislature today, that the people of the Western Cape are seeing more and more progress made under the DA, and endorsing this increasingly at the ballot box.

Today 76% of the Western Cape provincial budget is spent in the poorest communities of the province. This is achievable due to clean audits for 18 departments of the Western Cape government, and unqualified audits for a further five.

Census 2011 shows that under the DA, 99% of households in the Western Cape have access to piped water, 93.4% have access to electricity and 90.5% have access to flush toilets. This is the highest access in the country.

In the face of the DA's delivery success, Fransman's only political tool is to create fantasy attacks based on race and identity.

The ANC has lost all credibility on their ability to actually deliver in provincial government when you consider that by its final year in office it could not achieve a clean audit in a single department.

Fransman also knows that massive progress has been made in Education and Healthcare.

Schools in the Western Cape have the best access to proper sanitation of any province, with 98,6% of learners accessing flush toilets. Where the ANC governs, school learners in the poorest communities are made to use pit-latrines, chemical toilets or no toilets at all, with some ANC provinces providing under 20% of learners with flush toilets.

Today 99% of nursing positions are filled in the Western Cape, compared to just 66% filled under the ANC. This has enabled fundamental improvements in the quality of care citizens receive at primary healthcare facilities.

Having lost the argument on facts and at the ballot box, Fransman is becoming an increasingly desperate character, recently attempting to buy votes for the ANC and trying to bribe DA councillors to resign and join the ANC.

He would do well to acknowledge the realities of good governance in the Western Cape, rather than his own political fantasies.

Statement issued by Phumzile Van Damme, DA National Spokesperson, February 19 2015

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