The following speech was delivered by DA Premier Candidate for the Western Cape, Alan Winde, at the DA Western Cape Manifesto Launch, on 6 April 2024
In 2009 the DA was given the honour and privilege of governing the Western Cape for you our citizens.
Ever since, the Western Cape Government has been the best performing provincial government in the country. And we must – and will – continue to strive to keep our province on the path of prosperity and hope, with the people who elected us to govern at the centre of every single action we take every day.
As the DA-led Western Cape Government, we have made great strides over the last five years, and it is important to reflect on where we have come from and what we still want to do.
On Jobs! The Western Cape has the lowest unemployment rate in South Africa – more than 10 percentage points lower than the national unemployment rate of 32.1%.
More than 78% of all jobs in South Africa have been created in the Western Cape.
On Safety! The Western Cape is the only province where murder, while still way too high, has steadily declined over time, thanks largely to the hard work of our LEAP officers, Rural Safety and K9 units who place their safety on the line every day to make our communities safer.
In Energy! We are opening this critical sector, building an enabling ecosystem where private sector role players can work with us and our municipalities to end disastrous rolling power cuts that have for too long hobbled our growth. The City of Cape Town is already able to reduce load shedding for city customers by up to two stages, with the Western Cape well on its way to becoming the first load shedding-free province in the country.
In our classrooms – we are nurturing young minds. The top Grade 12 candidates in the country have come from the Western Cape in six of the past seven National Senior Certificate Examinations, with Western Cape learners scoring higher on global literacy tests than learners from other provinces. The Western Cape is building more schools faster than ever before. We have shown what is possible when we work with urgency – we are able to build a school in just 65 days!
And in our hospitals and clinics – we have a responsive, professional and caring healthcare system, epitomised by our world-class hospitals such as Tygerberg, Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, George, Groote Schuur, the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, and Mowbray Maternity hospitals. And I know that like many of our front line services, recently affected by national budget cuts our staff are working under even more challenging circumstances and I want to acknowledge them and all of our front line staff – from our nurses, to our doctors, firefighters, traffic officers, EMS staff, social workers – THANK YOU!
As the DA-led Western Cape Government, we’ve achieved all these successes because we govern for the people and with the people of this province.
And we are committed to being a transparent government, an accountable government, a government that does not tolerate corruption!
All these achievements could not have been possible without the people of the Western Cape. You, the citizens of our great province, are reason why we work tirelessly every day to do better.
You look to us for leadership, hope and worth – and we will not let you down.
There is only one party with the track record and the vision to keep governing effectively and with integrity – that party is the Democratic Alliance.
The Western Cape was rescued from the ANC back in 2009. Since then, the DA has shown the rest of South Africa what is possible if you put the needs of citizens above all else and build a government – and province – that works.
This has been acknowledged by President Cyril Ramaphosa himself, who said of the DA-governed Western Cape in 2022:
“Even as we may think that the wheels are coming off on everything … we do have one city that works, we do have one province that works, we do have a government that works when the chips are down.”
Yes – the Western Cape Works.
And with the support of voters on the 29 May, we will keep working to implement our plan to keep delivering for the people of the Western Cape.
While our citizens are the heart of our province, and the 90 000 staff members of the Western Cape Government are the soul of our administration and governance, you the members of our party are the lifeblood of this organisation.
To me the DA is not just my political home, it is my second family.And I would not be standing here today honoured and humbled to be your Premier Candidate if it was not for your support.
Through thick and thin, the highs and the lows, we have travelled a long, often arduous journey together, encountering many challenges along the way. Some of these obstacles, let us be honest, have been significant, stubborn and seeming immovable.
Yet we prove in the DA that by working together, with grit and determination, equipped with our core values of accountability, transparency and responsiveness we can overcome almost anything in our endeavour to keep building a province that works for all. This has been the result of many hours, days, weeks and months of toiling to build a better, stronger more resilient Western Cape.
We have come a long way together; we still have a long way to go.
We should allow ourselves to feel proud for all that we have been able to achieve. But we must remain humble too, aware that we must work even harder – first to be successfully re-elected as a majority government here in the Western Cape and then in our next term.
Let us today together write the next chapter of our party’s story of success, guided by our values, principles and the objectives outlined in this manifesto.
Jobs
We know that without a job, dignity is diminished. We know that without a job, a person cannot realise their full potential.
That is why the DA in the Western Cape has a plan to keep creating a thriving, inclusive, diverse and resilient economy backed by jobs and investment.
We must work even harder to create even more jobs – 800 000 new job opportunities over the next few years – to maintain our upward employment trajectory.
Through the Western Cape Government’s “Growth For Jobs Strategy” we will:
– invest heavily in infrastructure,
– cut red tape that gets in the way of doing business,
– grow investor confidence,
– promote the tourism, and
– ensure that our agricultural sector remains a major job creator in the province.
To further our job creation efforts, we must invest in our youth. We are investing R2.96 billion over 3 years in youth opportunity interventions, such as the Job Seekers Travel Voucher programme, YearBeyond and Chrysalis Academy programmes, to ensure that our young people have the right skills, the right qualifications, and the right experience to become a part of our economy.
Safety
We know that safety is a key concern for our residents. Too many citizens live in fear – fear of being struck by a gangster’s bullet, fear of being targeted by extortion mafias.
That is why the DA has a plan to create safer communities that are free from this fear.
Our pledge to the residents of the Western Cape is to fight crime with 1 300 Law Enforcement Advancement Plan officers, Rural Safety Units and K9 units, and to use technology and data to maximise our limited resources – we have some really cool technology which is making a difference in our fight against crime – like shotspotter, body cams, and drones.
Shortly after I took office in 2019, we introduced the Western Cape Safety Plan.
I am incredibly proud of the progress we have made over the last five years to build safer communities in the Western Cape.
Our LEAP programme, run in partnership with the City of Cape Town, was launched in 2020 with 500 law enforcement officers deployed to 4 priority areas. Today, 1 300 LEAP officers are on patrol, day and night, in13 priority areas.
Armed with data, evidence and backed by technology such as gunshot detection (ShotSpotter) technology, bodycams and drones, our women and men in blue work round the clock to fight and prevent crime.
The result is that LEAP officers have made over 27 000 arrests and have taken more than 554 illegal firearms off our streets.
Independent research by the Institute for Security Studies shows that of the four provinces it evaluated – Gauteng, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape – the Western Cape is the only province where murder has declined in the last five years.
Energy
2023 saw the worst load shedding to date. After more than 15 years we are still in the dark.
And there does not seem to be an end in sight as the ANC-led National Government continues to fumble in the dark, failing to deliver a reliable supply of electricity. Every time the lights are switched off by Eskom, the country bleeds tens of millions of Rand and jobs.
Our solution to South Africa’s electricity crisis is to reduce our dependency on Eskom by allowing independent power producers to become part of the solution to resolving this disaster.
And our pledge to the residents of the Western Cape is to cut load shedding by four stages, and to eventually end power cuts – for good!
In 2022, the DA-led Western Cape Government established the Western Cape Energy Council to drive alternative and independent energy production solutions to ease and eventually end load shedding in the Western Cape.
Central to our plan is our Western Cape Energy Resilience programme which is supporting municipalities across the province to implement renewable energy projects.
So far, this initiative has seen the successful request for information from more than 100 potential energy generation projects.
Devolution
National Government has shown that it is unable to fulfil even the most basic of functions, with serious consequences for the citizens of the Western Cape.
Policing, public transport, ports and the logistics sector – to name but a few – have been allowed to fall apart by National Government..
That is why the DA has a plan to fight for more provincial powers.
And our pledge to the residents of the Western Cape ahead of the 2024 election is to push for management of policing, transport and the ports – all key requirements for a prosperous, modern society.
This can be done by devolving these powers to provincial and local governments, which have the capacity to do a better job than National Government.
This is why the DA is pushing to have the Western Cape Powers Bill passed in the provincial legislature.
The Bill’s objective is to empower the DA-run Western Cape Government to fix what the ANC-run National Government has broken.
One core aim is to take over the functions of the failing South African Police Service in the province, and to direct policing resources to the areas and interventions where they are most needed.
This will bring law enforcement closer to the ground and allow for localised policing strategies tailored to the unique challenges of the province’s diverse communities.
The DA is also pushing ahead and preparing for the devolution of rail.
There is a desperate need for an affordable, safe and reliable rail service for city commuters, with the service in Cape Town having all but collapsed due to National Government’s inability to run it properly.
The City of Cape Town’s Rail Feasibility Study has found that an efficient passenger rail service will save lower-income households up to R932 million, sustain over 51 000 jobs and add R11 billion in value to the local economy each year.
Finally, the harbours, and especially the Cape Town Port, urgently need to be rescued from National Government.
A functional container terminal in the port over the next four years would translate into R5.6 billion in economic growth, and 20 000 new job opportunities generating R2.1 billion in remuneration and R1.6 billion in taxes.
It is crucial that the private sector is brought in to improve the efficiency of the Port of Cape Town and we will work towards building this partnership.
Education
Investing in our children is an investment in our province’s future.
This is one of the many reasons why we invest vast sums of our resources into providing dignified, safe places of teaching and learning for our children. In this financial year, we will spend R30.85 billion on education in the Western Cape. This is the largest budget for education that we have ever tabled, and the largest budget of any department in our province.
Mindful of the need to provide quality education to every learner, the DA government in the Western Cape invests heavily in schooling – particularly in the poorest areas.
That is why the DA has a plan to provide better education for every learner.
And our pledge to residents of the Western Cape ahead of the 2024 election is to build more schools faster than before to deliver quality education for all.
We will achieve this by continuing to implement our ‘Back on Track’ programme. On most Saturdays, you will see thousands of learners in classrooms across the province catching up on learning that they lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We will also keep building a quality education system through the Rapid School Build Programme, which has already seen the Western Cape Government construct 2 217 classrooms in 35 new schools, 15 replacement schools, and 323 existing schools since 2019.
As part of this ground-breaking programme to ensure that no learner is left behind, the Western Cape Government aims to build at least six new schools and 300 additional classrooms at existing schools for the 2025 school year.
Healthcare
A well-run, modern healthcare system will ensure that our residents live longer and healthier lives.
The Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness leads the way and continues to innovate and offer cutting-edge services, and we are continuously expanding health services to meet the needs of a growing population.
That is why the DA has a plan to create a healthier province.
And our pledge to residents of the Western Cape ahead of the 2024 election is to keep delivering a world-class public health service.
We will do achieve this by using data and innovation to drive decision-making and ensure that the bulk of the health department’s money is spent on health and wellness services.
For example, DA-led Western Cape Department of Health and Wellness’ award-winning tracking system follows each patient as they receive care in an emergency centre – from the time they are admitted and triaged by a nurse, through every step in the clinical process.
And in the past five years, the Western Cape Government has purchased two new surgical robots, which have performed 391 surgeries at Tygerberg Hospital and 192 surgeries at Groote Schuur Hospital to date.
This technology is the first of its kind to be used in Africa, with Groote Schuur and Tygerberg the only public sector hospitals using robotic surgery on the continent. The benefits of this technology for patients include quicker operating times, fewer complications, shorter hospital stays and faster recovery.
A clean innovative government
South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world..
While inequality is lower in the Western Cape than in the rest of the country, the Western Cape Government is working hard to keep reducing inequality, closing the gap between communities by further by prioritising the needs of the poor and marginalised.
There is so much more work to be done, this we know, and we will not let up until every single citizen in our province is given the dignity and opportunities they deserve.
That is why the DA is putting people before politicians.
And our pledge to residents of the Western Cape ahead of the 2024 election is to run a clean, innovative government that delivers for all.
In the Western Cape, public money is spent on service delivery for all who live here, with 75% of the Western Cape Government’s budget spent directly on poor and vulnerable residents.
This will include allocations for primary healthcare, home and community-based care, mental health services, learner transport, the school nutrition programme, low-income housing, food gardens in communities and schools, child and youth care centres, and poverty alleviation programmes.
The Western Cape Government is responsive to the needs of our citizens because it works in partnership with communities and provides channels for people to share how they experience government services.
We are particularly proud of our ‘First Thursday’ initiative, where we further open up our government to our citizens so they can raise governance-related issues and brings us their ideas in person. We do not hide from challenges. We confront them head on.
This level of access to government leaders is unprecedented in South Africa.
Conclusion
The DA-run provincial government is leading the way in every crucial aspect of delivery: creating jobs through a growing economy, reducing crime, cutting load shedding, building schools, improving health, and putting people before politicians.
The DA succeeds in government because it governs for the people.
We want to keep delivering to the people of the Western Cape, but we need your vote to keep making progress. A vote for the DA is a vote for a province that works.
And as the DA team we need to work flat out for the next 7 weeks to get every single DA voter to the polls to keep the Western Cape DA.
Thank you for everything you have done to get us here and thank you for everything I know you are going to put on the line for the next 7 weeks.
Thank you to my family and loved ones and thank you to your families and loved ones – I know that we will all make sacrifices and work long hours away from our homes.
I know that we all do it because we believe that there is only one party with the track record and the vision to govern effectively.
That party is the Democratic Alliance.
The Western Cape Works.
Vote to Keep the Western Cape DA.
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