Sipping Chardonnay while playing monopoly with people's lives

23 July 2019

The Western Cape Premier should know that he is not playing Monopoly and stop making excuses while perpetuating spatial injustice.

In his response today to last week’s State of the Province Address, GOOD Party MPL Brett Herron commended Premier Allan Winde for the liberal use of the term “integrity” in his speech, but said integrity involved more than lifestyle audits.

“Integrity is when your actions show you are delivering what you say,” Herron said. “What I heard was gimmicks and excuses…”

Herron said the Premier’s trumpeting of the Forest Village Housing Project as a solution to spatial injustice exposed his government’s lack of integrity.

“Forest Village is not justice. It does not represent spatial integration. It will not vanquish apartheid, as you say. It is more than 30 kilometers from Cape Town, further away than the townships created during apartheid. It entrenches racial inequality, spatial and economic injustice. It places the poor far from opportunity, and keeps them poor,” he said.

Herron dismissed the Premier’s contention that he was powerless to release well-located land unless national government did so, first. “We can change the status quo, but do you really want to?”

The idea to “take government to the people is fantastic”, but Herron said “it is an insult to suggest this can be achieved through a First Thursday event”. First Thursday’s is wonderful and great for those who enjoy sipping chardonnay at the bars and art galleries.

“But if you are serious about taking your government to the people then take it to those who cannot come to you. Take your government to Nyanga and Mannenberg, Thembalethu and Zwelihle,” Herron said.

On the economy, Herron said DA policies were negatively impacting the construction sector, and Cape Town’s achievements in efficiency were at risk due to proposed new red tape. If the DA had chosen to support major infrastructure projects and inner-city housing it would have helped to grow, not collapse, the construction sector in the Western Cape.

The Province’s own Treasury Department had found that inequality was increasing in the Western Cape. Inequality is a major cause of crime, but the only solution being offered to address crime was a new committee.  The DA has chosen to fund a war room that will not even consider the actual war happening on the Cape Flats.  

“Poor communities bear the brunt of crime, inequality, and they will also bear the brunt of climate change,” Herron said.

“Climate change, urban sprawl, Forest Village… economic, social, spatial and environmental justice.  All these issues are connected.  We have a global climate emergency on our hands and this government has not mentioned it once.”

Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD Member of the Western Cape Provincial Legislature, 23 July 2019