Mantashe is spanner in the works of President’s energy promises

While the Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcements in his State of the Nation (SONA) address last night regarding the energy sector, it is worrying that Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe does not seem to be on board.

Shortly after Ramaphosa announced during SONA that Independent Power Producers will be able to sell electricity to financially viable municipalities, Mantashe contradicted him in media interviews afterward by saying he is unwilling to commit to opening Bid Window 5. This essentially makes the president’s promise an empty one.

A limited number of IPPs have received licences to provide electricity to the grid, following the opening of four and half bid windows so far. The Integrated Resource Plan calls for more renewables to be added on an annual basis, but Mantashe has to open the next bid window, which will be the fifth one.

He has not done so, and judging by his statements last night he does not intend to do so anytime soon.

Mantashe has also continuously delayed the signing of section 34 notices, and has been slow to act on the amendment of schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act.

Every day of delay of these urgent reforms is another day of rolling blackouts and another day of severe damage to the South African economy.

Minister Mantashe needs to come clean on what his immediate steps will be to implement the President’s promises without any further delays. We will hold him to account, as well as calling on the President to act against Mantashe if he continues to be the spanner in the works.

Joy for new Home Owners in DA-run Drakenstein

“Secure tenure and access to opportunities.” That, said Executive Mayor of the Drakenstein Municipality Conrad Poole, was what their title deeds will mean to beneficiaries who received ownership of their homes in Gouda.

Joined by Western Cape Provincial Human Settlements Minister Tertius Simmers, Alderman Poole handed out 150 title deeds to jubilant residents. The handover was the highlight of the first phase of a project that will see the construction of 372 homes and provide the occupants with title deeds.

To date, all 150 homes have been constructed and all beneficiaries have taken occupancy.

The Executive Mayor advised beneficiaries not to sell their homes but to keep it as a legacy for their families or use it as collateral to raise loans to educate their children or grandchildren. A title deed, said the Mayor, could help secure the future of a family, a community and even a Municipality.

The project started in 2014 and created job opportunities and skills transfers during construction. The project also caters for people with disabilities and special needs.
It has brought about a definite improvement in the quality of the living environment of the beneficiaries, creating the necessary conditions to lead a dignified life, create a vibrant community and contribute to breaking the cycle of poverty.

It also provides people with secure tenure and access to opportunities which is in line with Drakenstein’s vision to be a “City of Excellence”.

Ramaphosa chooses ANC over SA

This evening, in his 2020 SONA speech, President Ramaphosa was forced into making a choice he has been putting off since assuming the office of the President two years ago. He was forced to choose between saving his country from economic disaster and saving his party from internal war. And tonight he chose the ANC over South Africa.

I am sure this was no easy decision for the President. No one wants to be remembered as the man on whose watch the country’s economy collapsed and millions of people were forced into hardship and suffering. But similarly, he would not want his legacy to be the weakening and possible split of the former liberation movement.

A bold president, however, would have chosen his country every time. Cyril Ramaphosa chose his party.

This SONA speech was his moment. The perfect storm of a stalled economy, rampant unemployment, fast-disappearing investment, shrinking tax revenue and a failed state-owned power utility has meant that this decision could no longer be kicked down the road, as the President has been doing these past two years. We have reached the proverbial D-day for introducing the critical reforms needed to stave off an economic collapse.

President Ramaphosa knows this urgency, and he also knows exactly what needs to be done. Since the start of his term as president – and particularly in recent months – economists, ratings agencies, opposition parties and even his own Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, have been telling him the same thing: Either you make bold economic reforms – even if this politically difficult – or you sign the death warrant of our economy.

The most urgent of these reforms are:
Breaking Eskom’s monopoly, closing the tap of taxpayer bailouts and keeping government’s hands off pension savings
Relaxing our stifling labour legislation to enable labour-absorbing businesses to succeed.
Reviving investor confidence by immediately walking away from the destructive populist policies of Expropriation Without Compensation and the National Health Insurance.

These were the low-hanging fruits that would have made the big difference. Without these critical interventions, our chances at rescuing our free-falling economy become very slim indeed. There are, however, many other things the President should also have announced tonight, such as doing away with the elite enrichment scam that is BBBEE, fixing basic education by curtailing the power of SADTU, and ensuring the safety of South Africans by devolving SAPS power to the provinces and metros.

But in each of these instances there is an interest within the ruling ANC alliance that was considered more important than the fate of 58 million South Africans.

In the case of Eskom and the electricity crisis, the President made some moves in the right direction, but stopped far short of what was required. Eskom remains the biggest threat to our nation, and the emergency measures announced tonight simply confirm what we all know: Eskom is dead. The ANC’s insistence on trying to resurrect it by raiding the pensions of government employees is madness. There is no “financially sustainable” way to throw a quarter of a trillion Rand of pension savings down a hole that has no bottom.

So while we welcome the announcement of plans to add additional energy to the grid, promises to process applications by commercial and industrial users to produce their own power within 120 days, as well as the decision to back the DA’s long-fought proposal to allow municipalities to procure their own power from independent producers, this is simply not enough.

What the President should have announced tonight was not only the breaking up of the utility into three separate entities – that of generation, transmission and distribution – but also the privatisation of parts of it to settle its debt. He should have announced a rationalisation of its bloated workforce, and he should have vowed to keep his hands of the pension savings of hard-working South Africans.

Instead the president chose to side with its union partners. He chose to protect the monopoly of the failed power utility at the expense of ordinary South Africans, who now have to pay three times for this failure: Once through the tax-funded bailouts, once through hiked electricity tariffs, and once through load-shedding and its resultant effects on the economy.

The president also chose to protect the financial interests of the unions who would stand to lose out if any of their members lost their jobs at the overstaffed Eskom. The irony of protecting the jobs of the same people whose pension savings he is planning to raid to prop up Eskom seems to have been lost on him.

We saw this same party-ahead-of-country decision playing out in virtually every other decision or omission of this SONA speech.

What the country, and particularly the 10.4 million South Africans without work, desperately needed was bold reforms to our draconian labour legislation that would allow businesses to thrive and absorb labour. For instance, there is no logical reason that Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises should have to jump through all the onerous and business-killing labour legislation, other than the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.

The business community have been begging this ANC government to help them solve our massive unemployment crisis, and President Ramaphosa knows exactly what needs to be done to free up our labour regime. But still he chose to side with the economic insiders – those with jobs as opposed to the millions on the outside – and maintain our hostile labour laws.

The same can be said for the economy-killing policies of Expropriation Without Compensation and the National Health Insurance. Both of these are guaranteed to have disastrous consequences for our economy and our people, yet the president and his government remain attracted to them like doomed moths to a flame.

In the case of the NHI, this is a plan we don’t need and certainly can’t afford. The additional tax burden this will require will surely slam a nail in the coffin of our already-dwindling tax revenue, not to mention the inevitable drain on our doctors and nurses as they leave our shores to flee the NHI. Furthermore, nothing in the NHI proposal speaks to the real challenges of healthcare infrastructure failure, skills shortages and the shortage of life-saving medicines.

Similarly, EWC will kill off all future investment in South Africa. A country that can’t guarantee secure property rights cannot possibly convince anyone that their investment will be safe. The moment you start picking and pulling at the thread of property rights, you start to unravel the entire economy. This is precisely what happened to Zimbabwe when they went down this road.

President Ramaphosa knows all of this. He knows that NHI will ruin healthcare in South Africa, both private and public. And he knows that EWC will shut the door on all investment, thereby hastening our runaway unemployment and our economic collapse. But yet he is prepared to persist with both these schemes, not because they are in the interest of the people of this country, but because they offer a cheap and easy tool for his party to win populist support. ANC first, South Africa last.

Tonight was his chance to be bold and courageous – to be the President of South Africa and not just the President of the ANC. To turn to his party and say, “This won’t be comfortable, but there are some things we have to do for the sake of our country.” But when push came to shove, President Ramaphosa simply could not do that.

Many South Africans were shocked back in 2015 when then President Zuma said, “I argued one time with someone who said the country comes first and I said, as much as I understand that, I think my organisation, the ANC, comes first.” It seemed treasonous for a President to unashamedly suggest that the interests of his party should trump those of his country. But Zuma was no aberration in his party. This attitude of “ANC first, South Africa last” is part of the DNA of the ruling party. President Ramaphosa’s decision to save the ANC at the expense of South Africa comes as no surprise.

His choice this evening could not have been simpler: Save your country from near certain economic collapse, or save your party and its alliance partners from a possible split down the middle.

This evening, with the eyes of the world on him and the hopes and expectations of every single South African resting on his shoulders, President Ramaphosa said, “Sorry, but I choose the ANC”.

EFF disruption of SONA denying the nation critical answers

Tonight’s antics of the EFF to disrupt the State of the Nation Address, on a series of spurious points, shows the childishness and immaturity of the party.

At a time in our nation when urgent solutions are needed to pressing crises in our country, the EFF has chosen to prevent the president confronting these. The DA has expectations for clear and definitive answers from the President tonight, and should he be prevented from addressing the nation we move further backward as a nation.

The EFF must adide the rules of Parliament, and the EFF must allow the President to speak.

Every member in the House, and every south African has the right to hear the State of the Nation tonight.

If you’re well enough for SONA, you’re well enough for court, Mr Zuma

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has taken note of reports indicating that former President Jacob Zuma will attend the 2020 State of the Nation Address.

Mr Zuma was too sick to attend his trial at the Pietermaritzburg Division of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court and too sick to attend the Zondo Commission yet now he is seemingly fit as a fiddle to travel all the way to Cape Town to attend the pomp and pageantry that is SONA.

To add insult to injury, Mr Zuma’s “doctor” reportedly booked him off until April. It would seem that the only illness that Mr Zuma is suffering from is an inability to appear before court and facing justice for the corruption charges that he faces.

Quite frankly, if Mr Zuma is not too ill to attend SONA in Cape Town, then he certainly is not too ill to attend his court hearing in Pietermaritzburg.

Furthermore, having Mr Zuma at SONA, in a place known to us all, would certainly make it much easier for the clerk of the court to issue his warrant of arrest.

Hlophe: DA will not remain silent when judiciary is threatened

The Democratic Alliance (DA) notes Cape Judge President John Hlophe’s statements in an affidavit submitted to the Judicial Conduct Commission (JSC) where he reportedly accuses the DA (as well as the Cape Town Bar Association and also former judge Johann Kriegler) of “judging” him.

His statements suggest the Judge President believes that he is being criticised unfairly.

The DA wants to make it clear that our views and assessment of his conduct are guided by our respect for the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. These are among the most fundamental and central values enshrined in the Constitution.

For many years, Judge Hlophe has escaped accountability for the myriad of allegations that have been leveled against him and as a consequence, he continues to sit at the helm of the Western Cape High Court where he wields influence for political gain.

The DA holds the view that no one – not even, and especially, the Judge President — should be above the law.

We also reiterate our call for Judge Hlophe to be suspended pending the outcome of the investigation into this matter.

The serious allegations against a Judge President not only present a threat to the credibility and independence of the judiciary but also diminishes public confidence in the courts, if not dealt with swiftly.

The latest complaint laid against Judge Hlophe by his deputy, Deputy Judge President (DJP) Patricia Goliath, serves above all to highlight an already grim picture of a court division that has all but been captured by Hlophe and his wife, Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe. The allegations against Hlophe listed in DJP Goliath’s complaint to the Judicial Services Commission include:

  • Allegations of nepotism;
  • A climate of fear and intimidation, including Hlophe both verbally and physically abusing colleagues;
  • Hlophe unilaterally changing court rules and best practice without any consultation in order to “advance his own narrow personal agenda”;
  • Hlophe unilaterally deciding to dissolve the position of Deputy Judge President;
  • Undue interference in the appointment of acting judges and in the assignment of judges to particular cases in a bid to affect the findings.

That these allegations must be investigated should be clear to everyone who holds dear the integrity and independence of the judiciary. Similarly, anyone holding dear the integrity and independence of the judiciary would know that this can only happen in the temporary absence from office of JP Hlope.

The DA will not remain silent when the independence of the judiciary is brought into question. An independent judiciary underpins a capable democratic state and when a court’s independence is brought into question, such allegations must be dealt with swiftly and decisively.

Unemployment stats reveals the painful realities of the young and the unemployed

StasSA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) on Tuesday revealed that youth unemployment stood at a shocking 58.1%, with an expanded rate of 69.5%. This means that more than half of South Africans aged 15 to 24 face joblessness.

South Africa’s economic crisis has deteriorated to the extent that young people, the ones who should be at the forefront of innovation and economic opportunities, languish due to unemployment.

The report estimates that there is around 3.3 million young people who are without jobs in South Africa, more alarming is that unemployment among those aged 25 to 34 is more than double that of people aged 45 to 54.

A number of these young people have attained an education, attended internship programmes, volunteered for work, and have put together good résumés, only to find themselves facing insurmountable unemployment challenges, for which Government has no answer.

The ANC Government is incapable of creating an economic environment that is conducive for job creation. Instead, Government senselessly squanders public money on bailing out failing parastatals instead of adequately equipping young people with skills and fixing the economy. This affirms that young people still find themselves fighting for their dignity, livelihoods and survival. It is evident that we are being forced into a dark abyss of injustice. Young people are in a continuous state of hopelessness and have stripped off their dignity.

The DAY believes a better life for young people means sustainable opportunities.

Government, both local and national, must ensure that job creation and youth empowerment is at the forefront of their agenda. Like in DA-led governments, a clear plan to rescue this country and create much needed jobs are needed.

The youth must refuse to continue being subjected to a life of poverty and shame.

Where the DA governs, job creation takes centre stage – our governments continue to ensure that:

  • Young people are equipped with the necessary entrepreneurial skills to build businesses and employ more young people.
  • Youth cafés are providing the youth with much needed career guidance, access to skills and personal development.
  • Economic and social development opportunities are also provided to fight unemployment.

The DA has and continues to fight tirelessly where we are in opposition to put forward alternative plans to alleviate joblessness and poverty. Our duty is to take this responsibility, own it and see this dream realised together. The DA Youth will follow the President’s State of the Nation closely.

The Incapable State of our Nation

This is the real state of our nation, delivered by the DA Leader, John Steenhuisen, following weeks touring South Africa, visiting communities, engaging and interacting with South Africans, and listening to their daily challenges and struggles.

Citizens of South Africa

Every morning, as I approach my office in the Marks Building at Parliament, my view down the corridor is dominated by a large portrait of our party’s founding member and first lady of liberalism, Helen Suzman.

She’s the first person I see at work in the morning and the last person I see before I leave. And I’d like to think that, in some small way, her constant presence there reminds us of what we can achieve with the right attitude and the right values.

Much has been written about Helen Suzman’s tenacity and courage in Parliament, where National Party members went out of their way to bully and silence her.

We all know her story – how she refused to be bullied, and how she kept on plugging away with question after question until she got the answers she wanted, and the National Party government was exposed.

Helen Suzman was a hugely impressive individual. When she stood up in the National Assembly, she was standing up for all those who had no voice there. For many she was a direct line to a government that didn’t even want to know they existed.

But arguably her single most impressive characteristic was her burning desire to always know the unfiltered truth. Not the biased news report. Not the hearsay or the rumour. Not the spin.

She was only interested in the truth of the first-hand account.

She saw the propaganda delivered week-in and week-out from the podium of the National Assembly for what it was, and she was having none of it.

Her famous motto was “go see for yourself”. And by tirelessly visiting prisons, townships and funerals, by meeting with banned individuals and by writing and answering thousands of letters, she got to a truth that no one else in Parliament would ever admit to.

Fast-forward many decades later, and it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Our Parliament has once again become a place of fairy tales and spin – where the ruling party will do all it can to present a sugar-coated version of the past, present and future, and hide the ugly truth from the people.

Tomorrow in Parliament you will hear from President Ramaphosa his account of the State of the Nation. And it will be a master class in spin.

If you’ve never witnessed one of his SONA speeches, you may be forgiven for going into this one with naïve expectations. But I sat there and listened to him in 2018, I sat there and listened to him last year, and I know exactly what is coming.

This won’t be our President playing with a straight bat to the nation in a time of great crisis. This won’t be the president taking us into his confidence and spelling out the true extent of our challenges and the tough decisions and sacrifices we will need to make.

No, it will be an hour of downplaying the bad and inventing the good. Of cherry-picking stats to show we’ve somehow turned a corner, and of whimsical dreams of a South Africa he knows in his heart he has no hope of achieving.

Last year it was high-tech cities and speeding bullet trains. What will it be this year? Already he is talking about building a Cape to Cairo highway, while he can’t even get the road to Mthatha fixed.

All this while our economic doomsday clock ticks ever closer to midnight.

I assure you, what he will present on Thursday evening, amid all the pomp and ceremony of red carpets and designer dresses, will not reflect the real state of our nation.

I already had a fairly good idea of what this was, but inspired and challenged by the woman in the portrait looking down the corridor outside my office, I decided to go and see for myself.

Over the past two weeks I have travelled to every province and spoken to hundreds of people in dozens of communities to get their views on where we stand as a nation. I have been to metros, to townships and to villages. I have met with residents, business owners and farmers.

And all these people I spoke to have two things in common:

One, they are all, in one way or another, victims of this government. Victims of its failure to deliver services, victims of load-shedding, victims of unemployment and victims of the daily crime that government cannot protect them from.

And two, they don’t dwell in their victimhood. All the people I spoke to were resilient and resourceful. They were hustling to get by in the face of indescribable obstacles.

They were surviving despite this government.

I saw people living in the worst possible conditions, but still planting beautiful gardens outside their shacks.

I met with tight-knit communities who look out for each other and share the little they have, because they know their government has long since turned its back on them.

I spoke to a business owner in Kempton Park who is determined to save the jobs of all his employees, despite government threatening to close him down or fine him if he doesn’t fire half the women in his employ for the sake of “gender parity” and a mindless box-ticking exercise.

The people of this country are not the problem.

There is so much extraordinary potential in ordinary South Africans, and they want nothing more than to unlock this potential. They don’t want to remain trapped in serfdom and dependent on hand-outs from the state.

Despite the ANC government’s apparent pride in the size of its social grants programme, this is not a source of pride at all. In fact, 17 million grants each month is a shameful statistic.

People don’t want this. They want dignity, independence and the freedom to choose.

South Africans survive despite what amounts to a daily onslaught from their own government.

Now imagine what we could unleash if we had a government that didn’t kick its people to the kerb day after day. Imagine a government that stood with the people.

Perhaps, instead of “thuma mina” our president should have chosen as his motto: “ndihamba nawe”. Because isn’t that what we need? A government that walks with us.

We know the threat that Eskom, Expropriation Without Compensation and the nationalisation of the health industry hold for our battered economy. I don’t need to spell out the extent of our economic collapse.

Fellow South Africans, we all know the big picture of the crisis we’re in – the massive unemployment, the spiralling national debt, the non-existent growth and the disappearing investment.

But it is where this collapse of government and state touches the lives of individual South Africans that you see the sheer scale of our crisis.

Over the past two weeks I have heard first-hand accounts of how the failure of local and national government has caused untold suffering for people from all walks of life.

These people will not get a mention in the president’s SONA speech.

You will not hear about a community of 2,000 people on the outskirts of Upington that has not one single water tap between them, and have lived like this for the past eight years.

You will not hear of the small businesses that line Mangaung’s Moshoeshoe Street which are now being forced, one by one, to close their doors because the Metro government there has let the street fall into complete disrepair.

You will not hear of the people of Uitenhage who have to wait months and months for someone to come and fix their leaking water pipes, while thousands of litres of precious water run down the streets and form dams in the neighbourhood, in the middle of a drought.

You will not hear of the farmers in Limpopo who had to step up and do government’s job in containing the foot and mouth disease outbreak there, at great personal cost and sacrifice.

You will not hear about the terrible overcrowding in places like Gauteng’s Tembisa Hospital which lead to the deaths of ten babies recently, while not far away the Kempton Park Hospital has stood empty and abandoned for two decades.

Stories like these won’t feature in President Ramaphosa’s summary of where we stand as a country. Because the truth simply doesn’t fit the narrative.

Instead you are bound to hear a laundry list of carefully selected stats, badly disguised PR about government programmes, and plenty of vague forecasts about when and where our missing investments will start to return.

Everything we ever dreamt of will be just around the next bend. You will be asked to give it a little more time – our turnaround is so close you can almost touch it. As it always is, year after year.

But there is something else I suspect you will also hear plenty of. Judging by his recent remarks, I expect President Ramaphosa will use his SONA speech to reiterate his call for the building of a capable state. In fact, I dare you to count the number of times he uses this phrase on the night.

This elusive “capable state” has become somewhat of a mantra for him in recent weeks. And although it has been pointed out to him that this has been a core DA principle for the past two decades, he has continued to bandy it about as though the ANC had just thought of it.

From his January 8 statement speech to his weekly newsletter, the capable state has been his go-to theme of late.

He has promised, in his own words, that government will “end the practice of poorly qualified individuals being parachuted into positions of authority through political patronage”.

The irony, of course, is that the entire philosophy of the ANC-in-government is the very antithesis of the capable state.

Ever since they officially adopted the policy of cadre deployment back in 1997 – a process the president himself was once in charge of – the capability of the state has been slowly eroded to the point where today it is hard to find a single ANC-run department, local government or parastatal that is not in a constant state of crisis or looting.

The ANC’s deep ideological desire to control every single part of the state – and thereby control the lives of all citizens – is so baked into its DNA that it will never be able to walk away from cadre deployment.

And so the president’s words on building a capable state are entirely meaningless. If you need any proof of this, consider what took place not even one week after his solemn commitment to merit-based appointments.

  • The head of the Public Service Commission appointed his mistress as a senior government official;
  • Health Minister Zweli Mkhize appointed his niece as his Chief of Staff, despite a massive cloud of corruption hanging over her head;
  • Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu appointed the thoroughly compromised Mo Shaik and Menzi Simelane as her special advisors;
  • And the ANC decided to appoint an immunologist and former university vice-chancellor as the Chair of the embattled Eskom board.

This all happened within a week of the president promising us that the days of nepotism, patronage and unqualified appointments are a thing of the past in the ANC.

Hollow, meaningless words.

We’ve seen what cadre deployment has done to Eskom. We’ve seen what it has done to SAA. We’ve seen what it has done to PRASA, Denel, Transnet, SABC and every other state-owned enterprise.

But if you really want to see the devastation caused by this practice, you need to visit the towns and villages that seldom make the national news cycle. Because here the destruction of the state and its inability to deliver is on full display, 24 hours a day.

What I saw these past two weeks across the breadth of South Africa is the real state of our nation, and the true legacy of this ANC government: The Incapable State.

Every single local government I visited has been paralyzed by bad policy and worse appointments, to the point where it can no longer deliver the very basics.

I saw a ruling party trapped in a nightmarish Groundhog Day – a reality from which they cannot escape. And so they simply repeat, in the same perfunctory manner, the same ineffective steps over and over again until the municipality eventually fails and is placed under administration and run by remote control.

Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat.

And the man who is meant to lead them out of this nightmare – the darling of the media and last hope of the once-proud ANC – is himself stuck in his own quicksand of warring factions and crippling indecisiveness.

The incapable head of an incapable state.

Hoping for this to change by itself won’t get us anywhere, because the ANC will simply carry on along this downward spiral until there is nothing left to save and nothing left to lose.

We, the citizens of this country, need to administer the shake-up that is required.

For this, we need to reimagine our entire political landscape. I wrote in my newsletter last week that South Africa needs a reset, in the same way that the country got a reset back in 1990 with the unbanning of political parties and the negotiation of our new democracy.

We need to break out of the old way of thinking that has dominated our political discourse these past two-and-a-half decades. And by “we” I mean everyone who wants to save the country from the disaster we’re heading towards, ANC included.

We need to forget about the old dogmas of conflicting ideology – that’s the wrong conversation entirely. The Berlin Wall has long fallen, Brezhnev is not in the Kremlin and the Cold War is over.

Our problems require pragmatic solutions, and none of this is rocket science.

For starters, we must immediately consign the practice of cadre deployment to the dustbin of history. If the president wants a capable state, he must put his money where his mouth is and build one.

But cadre deployment is but one symptom of a state that doesn’t know where it is required to act, and where the best course of action is to simply step out of the way.

If we want to unleash the power of the people, then we have to let them be part of the solution. Let the private sector do what it can, so that the state can focus on doing what it must.

We don’t need one monolithic state-run energy company. Let us sell off Eksom’s coal-fired stations to settle its debts, but let them still manage the grid. Let us open up the market to full competition. Let households, companies, mines and municipalities generate and sell power.

Then let us do the same in the education sector. The state is clearly struggling to provide quality education for all, and particularly in disadvantaged communities. Let us welcome the help of all who can assist.

For starters, we should be strengthening, not weakening, the roles of parents and school governing bodies. These are the most important and committed allies we have.

Let’s also encourage the entrance of private schools in all communities and let’s properly explore charter schools as a way of involving the private sector in education.

But most importantly we need to ensure that our teachers are properly trained, monitored and incentivised, and that will mean clipping the wings of the unions.

When it comes to healthcare, the idea that the state must be everything to everyone through the NHI is a terrible idea. We don’t need to destroy private healthcare in order to strengthen public healthcare.

The DA’s Sizani Healthcare Plan is full of practical solutions to our country’s massive healthcare challenges and won’t require additional funding or tax increases.

And again, by simply doing the basics right – by appointing capable people to run hospitals and health departments and by spending tax revenue on doctor and nursing posts rather than failed SOEs – we can fix healthcare without the NHI.

Safety and security is another area in which government must learn to let go of its tight national grip and start devolving power to the provinces and metros. Let those who are closest to the issues on the ground be responsible for the safety of the communities there, in line with international best practice.

And finally, government must accept that the best role it can play in creating jobs is that of a facilitator. Beyond creating an enabling environment, it should get out of the way and let businesses do most of the heavy lifting.

Government must learn to be a true supportive partner to the private sector. This means reforming and liberalising our labour legislation, and it can start by exempting small and medium businesses from all labour legislation other than the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.

These are just some of the ways in which we can start to turn the country around. And I know the President has people on his executive who have been telling him the exact same thing.

If he’d had the courage to act on a good idea when his Finance Minister presented it to him, we would’ve already taken the first steps towards our recovery.

We have to let go of the ideas of the past and embrace the ideas of the future. And that means recognising the goals and the values that we might share across the aisle, rather than the old battle lines that have always divided us.

If we do so, we will find that we have far more in common than we perhaps thought we did.

What we refer to as the DA’s vision for South Africa – that of an open opportunity society for all – is in fact a vision that many people outside of the DA share. Once you start unpacking this vision and describing to people what it looks like in real terms, you find that it resonates far and wide.

This vision speaks of a society where one set of rules binds everyone equally – where a connected elite doesn’t get to play by its own rules.

It speaks of a society in which equal opportunity is more important than equal outcome. A society where individuals are so much more than mere representatives of their race or culture or gender.

A society where every person has the freedom to pursue their own dreams and create for themselves a life of meaning and value.

But no one can realise these freedoms if their basic needs aren’t met. And so, in our vision for South Africa, every man, woman and child has access to enough food to nourish them and keep them free from hunger.

Every family has a decent home, and this home has piped water, sanitation and electricity.

Every person can access quality healthcare within a reasonable distance of their home, and people feel safe and secure in their neighbourhoods.

All children receive the benefit of early childhood development before going on to attend a school where they receive quality basic schooling, free from the disruption of unions. Each of them will then have access to some form of post-school qualification or skills development.

This is a South Africa where every person stands equal before the law, and where everyone is free to worship whom they want to worship, love whom they want to love and speak the language of their choice.

It is a South Africa where all these opportunities enabled by the state has made it possible for people to live their own lives with dignity and independence. But for those who still need it, there is a social safety net to ensure that no one suffers the brutal effects of extreme poverty.

This vision is our entire project in the DA. Our dream is to help build a South Africa of opportunity for all – a country where every individual has the freedom to choose their own path in life.

And this is perhaps what struck me most during my tour across the nation: The lack of choice. The lack of freedom for people to decide where and how to live their lives.

I saw people whose lives had been limited not only by the immense obstacles in their path, but also by a government whose controlling, paternalistic attitude has removed all choice for them. A government that says: We know what’s best for you. We’ll look after you.

We often tell our children to dream big, because one day they can be whatever they choose. But for so many of our children growing up in rural villages and sprawling townships across South Africa, those dreams don’t mean much.

Their freedom of choice and their freedom to dream have been stolen from them.

That’s not what I want for my children, and neither should anyone else. Our children’s dreams should remain as wide and vast as the skies of our beautiful country. And it is up to us to ensure that they do.

That will require a new beginning here – a blank page on which all those who share this vision can sketch out a new way forward together, free from the ideological anchors of the past that continue to drag us back.

I believe this is possible. We can have the things we dream of.

We can have schools where our children receive the kind of education that sets them up for life.

We can have functional and safe cities – free from gangs and drugs – with world-class public transport networks.

We can have an economy that is attractive to investors once more – an economy that grows and creates jobs.

All of this is possible, but not with this current government.

That is where we need to make the change. That is where we need to hit the reset button and organise ourselves in a new way around common values and a common vision for South Africa.

I truly believe there are enough people across the whole political spectrum who genuinely care about the future of our country, who share the same values and who want the same things.

Let us now do whatever it takes to find each other.

Thank you.

DA welcomes National Lotteries Commission COO voluntary leave following DA pressure

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has reliably learnt that the Chief Operating Officer of the National Lotteries Commission (NLC), Philemon Letwaba has taken voluntary leave with immediate effect until 1 March 2020.

This comes after the NLC has finally relented from pressure from the DA and the public that an independent forensic audit must be conducted into the crisis hit commission over dodgy payments to friends and family, including the wife of the COO.

To date, Trade & Industry Minister, Ebrahim Patel has remained steadfast in his silence while allegation after allegation of corruption has been unearthed by GroundUp and journalist Raymond Joseph. This includes the threats of lawsuits and criminal charges against journalists by the NLC for uncovering their underhandedness.

The voluntary leave of the COO is a step in the right direction but it is merely a cosmetic one unless the Minister is prepared to get his hands dirty and tackle the rouge Board at the NLC.

That is why on the 23rd of January 2020, I wrote to the Minister to ask him to fire the Board and place the NLC under administration due to their failure to act against the COO and get to the bottom of the rot. Unfortunately, the Minister has continued to ignore my request, let alone respond to my letter. The big question is, what is the Minister so afraid of when it comes to fighting alleged corruption in the NLC?

The DA again reiterates it’s call for Minister Patel to stop hiding in the shadows and show some leadership by firing the Board and placing the NLC under administration.

Trade unions shooting themselves in the foot by blocking SAA retrenchments

It is ironic that the trade unions, National Union of Metalworkers (NUM) and the South African Cabin Crew Association (SACCA), are going to court to try to stop the South African Airways (SAA) Business Rescue Practitioners, Les Matuson and Siviwe Dongwana, from retrenching staff.

There is general consensus that SAA is overstaffed by at least 30% and with passengers abandoning SAA in droves the overstaffing is probably much, much higher. There is absolutely no way that SAA can be rescued, if at all, without massive staff retrenchments. Clearly NUM and the SACCA are oblivious to the fact that they are pulling the trigger of a gun directly pointing at their foot. Their action will only add to the woes of SAA and will in all likelihood be a major factor that will drive SAA into liquidation and the loss of all jobs at the airline.

If the Minister of Public Enterprises, Pravin Gordhan, and, the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, are serious about the business rescue process for SAA, they will desist from any more taxpayer bailouts for the airline. Sadly, taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the very unwise, in fact simply foolish, government guarantees issued to prop up the completely bankrupt and looted SAA.

No doubt the trade unions, NUM and SACCA, are labouring under the impression that the taxpayer bailout honeypot will just continue to pour money into SAA to pay the bloated staff compliment. Given the absurd comments from President Cyril Ramaphosa criticising the SAA Business Rescue Practitioners for their move to cancel unprofitable routes it is not surprising that the trade unions are under the impression that, unlike countless children who go to bed hungry every night, the ANC government will not abandon them and will continue to pay billions of Rands of taxpayer money into the SAA black hole to ensure that they retain their highly paid redundant jobs.