Premier Alan Winde participated in the debate on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2024 State of the Nation Address (SONA), today, at the Cape Town City Hall.
Below is an executive summary of his speech:
Mr President, we have all heard the story of a tale of two cities; today I want to tell you the story of a tale of two parties.
One is a party of failure called the African National Congress (ANC). This is a party that cannot keep the lights on; cannot run Transnet properly and cannot keep our ports operational.
This is a party that gave us the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, a party that does not know how to grow the economy and create jobs; a party that cannot provide SASSA grants to vulnerable citizens.
This is a party of absolute failure.
Then we have the Democratic Alliance (DA); a party that gets things done, a party that is busy saving South Africa.
Nothing demonstrates what I have said better than what we are doing here in the Western Cape.
Mr President, I am not talking of a fairy tale about a fictitious Tintswalo. I am talking about real people like Danver Windvogel and Denver Adonis.
These two young men, from poor households, finished matric in Franschhoek. In a province that enables people to reach their potential, these young individuals, in a partnership with Belgium, went overseas and learned how to make chocolate. They came back here, got a loan to get their business going, and started Huguenot Fine Chocolates.
Unfortunately, Mr President, along came a pandemic and with it a lockdown. But these two entrepreneurs pushed through and managed to make it to the other side of the pandemic.
But then they battled to pay their rent, and that’s when the DA-run Stellenbosch Municipality stepped in and enabled them with a property and a 10-year lease in the middle of the main street of a tourism Mecca called Franschhoek.
But it was not long until load shedding hit. That is when the DA-run provincial government stepped in. We have an SMME Booster Fund, for small, emerging entrepreneurs, to help them through the worst effects of loadshedding.
They were struggling. But this DA-led municipality came to their aid.
This is not a fairy tale, it is reality.
When I visited them last week Saturday, I asked if they sold sugar-free chocolates for diabetics. They said that they normally do but unfortunately, the special ingredients that they need have been sitting at a port for weeks, unable to reach them.
Again, the ANC is dismally failing entrepreneurs with the collapse of the Port of Cape Town.
The ANC doesn’t just fail entrepreneurs when it cannot provide power or an operational port, it is also failing towns.
The President spoke here last week as if corruption was a thing of the past, as if state capture did not happen under his watch.
Let me tell you about a town in this province that has been captured, a town called Knysna, which is run by a coalition of the ANC, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Patriotic Alliance (PA). All those citizens are now suffering.
Today that town has no water supply, functional refuse removal or sewage systems.
This is a warning for after the 2024 general elections. That coalition has captured everyone in that town. Mr President, I dare you to help us put that municipality under administration because that is what needs to happen
When the ANC fails, the DA steps in to create hope.
The DA will do this through the Western Cape Powers Bill. This bill will further create an enabling economic environment.
Policing is the first place where the devolution of power should happen. When the Minister of Police says, “Not over my dead body”, what do we do in the Western Cape? We go ahead and deliver for our citizens, anyway.
Four years ago, we launched our Law Enforcement Advancement Programme (LEAP), in partnership with the City of Cape Town, deploying officers to areas with the highest murder rates in this region.
Five years ago, if I stood here, I would have had to admit that this region had the highest murder rate per capita in the country. We were the murder capital of South Africa. But without the Minister of Police, we deployed our LEAP officers to areas such as Hanover Park, Delft, Kraaifontein, Phillpi East, Nyanga, Gugulethu, Bishop Lavis, Khayelitsha, and Mitchells Plain.
Mr President, if you look at an independent report from the Institute of Security Studies that mapped the four provinces with the highest murder rates: Gauteng, Kwazulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape, and Western Cape, in three of them murders tragically went up. In one of them, the Western Cape, murders came down over the last 5 years.
If we can do that here with our 1200 LEAP officers, backed by data and evidence, imagine what we will do when we force you to give us the power of policing.
Mr President, you should be hanging your head in shame. Twenty-seven thousand people in our country were murdered last year.
In this province, we will show that we can make a difference. We offer hope.
In this province, we can now build a school for 500 learners in 65 days. We are the only province with the #BackOnTrack programme, where every Saturday learners and teachers are in class clawing back the learning losses incurred during Covid-19.
We are the only province with a learner retention rate of 74%. In the other provinces, Mr President, the learner retention rate is a measly 40%
It is this province, Mr President, where jobs are created. Here in the Western Cape we have the lowest unemployment rate in the country.
Seven out of 10 young people in this country do not have a job. That is shocking.
In this province, 8 out of 10 people have a job.
These are the facts, Mr President. That is why so many people are coming from ANC-run provinces to the Western Cape. They are voting with their feet.
We have a tale of two parties: a party that dismally failed the citizens of this country versus a party that creates hope, gets things done, and is going to make a massive difference once you announce the election date. This is a party that is going to save South Africa.
Mr President, announce that date.