Helen Zille’s opinion piece in Daily Maverick Refers.

Zille speaks of the undeniable progress of the DA administration, but the only undeniable aspect of the last 10 years of her administration’s progress is that the lives of African and Coloured citizens of the Western Cape have got worse.

The only good news the citizens of the Western Cape heard from her speech is that it was her last SOPA and that she will be leaving office. One shining example of Helen Zille’s administration, which is blatantly obvious to anyone standing at a major intersection on Cape Town’s main roads at 17:00, is the continuation of apartheid-era spatial development.

The daily exodus of Coloured and African citizens from the city centre is because housing is unaffordable for the average person to live close to where they most likely are working in servitude. But there is also a historical reason for this: it’s called apartheid, a political system that sought to turn blacks into serfs. This system, which was meant to engrave white superiority, privilege and “baasskap” all over South Africa, had as one of its pillars the Group Areas Act. This cruel, inhuman legislation was used to introduce ethnic removals, a practice under which blacks were removed from prime land and resettled in areas which the rulers of the time resolved should be their new residential areas. Black people in Cape Town were kicked out of areas such as Simon’s Town, Claremont, District Six, Green Point and Constantia.

In the Western Cape, the DA-led provincial administration has failed basic responsibilities entrusted to them to provide adequately and also better the lives of all the citizens of the Western Cape. Khayelitsha, Hanover Park, Langa, Bishop Lavis, Lavender Hill, Mitchells Plain and Bo-Kaap – areas where Black and Coloured citizens live – are without services or have dilapidating infrastructure. An example of this is the staircase of a council house in Manenberg that fell down this past weekend. Manenberg is a product of apartheid removals.

The slick DA has bamboozled the citizens of this province by using its internal marketing lackeys to propagate the perception that the Western Cape is a well-oiled machine, better than any other in South Africa.

But under DA governance the Western Cape has experienced the re-creation of an apartheid society. The trickle-down paradigm of neoliberalism does not equate to our youth having better access to opportunities, and not being absorbed by the gangs on the Cape Flats. The reduction of red tape has seen historically white-owned businesses and the established middle class, which also comprises mostly white citizens, increasing their pockets in the Western Cape. The agriculture sector in the Western Cape is only owned by 1% of black citizens – this is not the transformation agenda of pro-poor policies.

Helen Zille has been talking about her capable administration and her competent appointments since the day she took the Premier’s office and also during her last State Of the Province Address. She spoke about the efficiency of her administration and her appointments. Yet, when one takes a deep-dive into her administration, one will see she has been guilty of equating the word “capable” as a synonym for “white” and “male”.

The appointment of Tim Harris to the Tourism, Trade & Investment Promotion Agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape (Wesgrow) is a case in point. Harris was a DA Member of Parliament and was speedily moved into the position of Director of Trade and Investment in the Office of the Executive Mayor of the City of Cape Town. Within a year he was hand-selected to be the CEO of Wesgro. Harris did not have experience running a Trade and Investment office nor did he have any prior experience in a CEO position but, lo and behold, he still operates as CEO of Wesgro. Harris’ appointment is a prime example of DA double standards: this party whinges whenever the ANC appoints an inexperienced person, but when it does the same it conveniently keeps quiet and expects the country to trust its superior judgement. If this is not a form of colonial thinking, what is it?

This appointment runs close to her narrative that Africans must thank colonialism for healthcare, piped water, roads and an independent judiciary. She ignores the hurt and pain millions of people experienced under colonialist rule. The German state has made it illegal for any citizen to positively commemorate Nazism – this law is called Volksverhetzung, the incitement of hatred. The law stipulates that anybody who tries to arouse hatred or promotes violence against such a group or an individual could face a sentence of up to five years in prison. Helen Zille’s comments conveniently ignore the concentration camp that the colonial forces created in Africa and all the countless other oppressions they had inflicted on Africans.

Within the ANC, while the process to self-correct might be slow, as an organisation we do proceed back to our objectives. Within the DA, the imperial Helen Zille was given the space to say and do as she pleased with impunity. She was allowed to live out her days as Premier and the DA protected her even though there was an intense public outcry over her disgusting comments. We await both the court case’s outcome and the re-opening of the South African Human Rights Commission’s inquiry into the matter.

The ANC is a party of non-racialism; our party’s constitution embodies these values and it is our aim as a liberation movement to move our people towards a society of non-racialism. The preamble of the ANC’s constitution speaks to fighting the injustice of apartheid and “replace it with a united, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa in which the people as a whole shall govern and all shall enjoy equal rights”. The ANC has had some forces within the party that have tried to shift our objectives of liberating our people – this is a feature of our organisation that we are aiming to eradicate.

Since 1912, our organisation has always self-corrected and returned to our path of creating a prosperous South Africa. Rule 4. 16 of the ANC constitution declares any member that joins the ANC to solemnly declare to “work towards making the ANC an even more effective instrument of liberation in the hands of the people”. This has always been an objective of our organisation.

Election-driven calls for a provincial police force and rail system detract from the competencies the DA had within their ambit during the 10 years of governance. Low-income housing in the city has gone unbuilt, the rollout of Wi-Fi capacity to underprivileged areas is still to happen, the transformation of key sectors has stagnated. The cycle of poverty continues and black citizens on living a life of scavenging for the little pieces to build some decency among the indecency of DA governance.

The DA administration detracts from the objectives of a social democratic movement. Neoliberalism and populist movements have only brought pain and suffering to the majority of citizens where these ideologies have taken hold. Black citizens in the Western Cape have continued to prop up the system of entrenching white privilege. The change the DA proposes is based on opportunistic fearmongering tactics, devoid of well-developed policies and structured on optics rather than substance. We have it in our hands to change this. DM

Ebrahim Rasool is Head of Elections, Western Cape ANC.