The Manifesto

Based on carefully costed and mutually reinforcing policies that set out practical steps to attain our vision, this manifesto is our blueprint for a winning nation. It is the compass by which we must steer, to become one nation with one future.

THE DA’s BLUEPRINT FOR SOUTH AFRICA

A safe, secure and corruption free South Africa

We will:

• Increase the number of police from 190 000 to 250 000, and ensure that they are fit and properly trained.
• Reinstate specialised units to deal with specific types of crime, such as the Scorpions and the Commandos,to allow expertise to be pooled and certain crimes to be prioritised.
• Create a Directorate for Victims of Crime, which will administer a Victims of Crime fund, run a national victim support training centre and administer a toll-free helpline for victims.
• Ensure that all able-bodied prisoners work, both to equip them with skills they can use outside prison and to allow them to partly atone for their crimes.
• Bring back the Scorpions

Creating jobs, fighting poverty

We will:

• Create jobs by reducing the corporate tax rate to 27% and creating export processing zones to attract labour intensive industries.
• Give young South Africans who meet certain conditions an opportunity voucher, which will allow them to subsidise study costs or start a business.
• Make an Income Support and Unemployment Grant of R110 per month available to all South Africans earning below R46 000 a year who do not receive another state grant.
• Allow any South African aged between 16 and 24 to perform a year-long voluntary community service in a school, hospital,municipal office, the SAPS or SANDF.
• Encourage employers to take on young workers through learnership programmes and wage subsidies.

Education that works

We will:

• Give control of their classrooms back to teachers with a range of measures, including stronger support for the right to expel disruptive learners and dedicated remedial schools for disruptive learners.
• Ask all teachers to write standardised knowledge assessments in the subjects they teach, and we make pay increases and promotions dependent on the results.
• Institute a nation-wide bursary voucher programme aimed at giving the most academically promising 250 000 children from low income families the opportunity to receive a better school education.
• Increase the number of teachers by reopening teacher training campuses and reinstituting teacher bursaries.
• Introduce a universal per-child preschool state subsidy for early childhood
• education.

Quality healthcare

We will:

• Ensure that every hospital and clinic is managed by a person with the training and qualifications to run it successfully.
• Make public hospitals subject to strict  standards and rigorous performance
• requirements, similar to those currently expected of private hospitals.
• Increase the number of doctors and nurses by removing restrictions that have been placed on training doctors and nurses in the private sector.
• Make it possible for patients to collect medicines from any accredited pharmacy where they live, so that they do not have to spend hours traveling to a state hospital.
• Boost our Aids prevention programme by creating a deputy ministry of HIV/ Aids, by involving all public representatives in promoting Aids awareness, and by integrating faith-based organisations into the prevention campaign.