26 January 2024
The Revolutionary Alliance comprising the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party (SACP), Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) waged a relentless decade long struggle for freedom and a united and prosperous South Africa. Our 1994 democratic breakthrough was a major advance for the realisation of our yearning for freedom, justice, and unity. Throughout our history of struggle for unity and democratic consolidation, the enemies of progress always employed tactics of divide and rule, white supremacy and “swart gevaar”.
The present Democratic Alliance (DA) is a reincarnation of its forebears whose politics were premised on white supremacy and racist fanatics. This is evinced by their undisguised attempt to preserve apartheid era white privilege and keep the Western Cape as an enclave of white supremacy. The so-called Western Cape Provincial Powers Bill is nothing but an attempt to undermine the constitutional principles of building a united, non-sexist, non-racial, democratic, and prosperous society. The DA is abusing its majority to bulldoze the separatist or secessionist Provincial Powers Bill against the constitution and sound legal advice. They seek to legitimise the process by embarking on choreographed public hearings scheduled to commence on Monday 29 January 2024.
We maintain that the Bill is a farce and the public hearings a ruse. The DA is forcing public hearings despite three legal opinions from advocates appointed by the DA in the Legislature, advising them in no uncertain terms that their proposed Powers Bill:
· Does not have the legislative competence or constitutional authority to develop, propose and enact this, Bill.
· Provides no constitutional premises upon which its legislative authority is predicated. The Bill is therefore illegitimate and invalid.
· The Bill itself does not disclose the legal basis for its own existence, and
· The subject-matter of the Powers Bill is not in the legislative competence of the Province.
Over and above the legal advice, the fundamental basis for rejecting the Powers Bill is the reality that at the heart of the Powers Bill is the building of an apartheid Zionist Western Cape by the DA-Capexit alliance. Such an envisaged apartheid Zionist Western Cape’s basic tenets will include key amongst other things; divide the national population and creation of enclaves of privilege and misery for the people of the Western Cape, resuscitation of the discriminatory apartheid system along racial lines, deepening of inequality and indignity of poverty.
Thus, if the sprawling squatter camps, homelessness in the Cape flats, escalating crime, extortions, corruption, school underperformance, continued un-placement of learners in schools, overcrowding in schools and deteriorating public health facilities, unemployment and poverty are not evidence of the of the neo-liberal DA’s incompetence, the farce concocted by the DA Capexit alliance constitutive of the right wing Cape Independence Advocacy Group (CIAG), ACDP, and Freedom Front Plus is the perilous future.
Yet, with almost 14 years of uninterrupted governance in the Western Cape and an average of R2,5 trillion to work with over said period, yet the Gini coefficient in Western Cape remains at 0.62. Presently, the Western Cape is characterised by asset and income inequality and spatial segregation that perpetuates the tale of two cities. The 16 per cent White demographic enjoys the lion’s share of the Western Cape’s R654 billion Gross Domestic Product. And, after 14 years of electoral dominance and armed with an annual fiscal budget of R303,36 billion, managed respectively by the Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town in particular, there comes a claim that National government is unwilling to provide services to the people of the Western Cape. We are therefore, convinced as the ANC headed alliance that the colonial apartheid imagination is ever present in the political DNA of the of the DA.
Further, the farce that this Powers Bill is about service delivery fools no one. This ruse is about capturing the GDP after the DA already control the Western Cape fiscus. If it was about service delivery we were not going to experience violent crimes that are geographically and racially concentrated whilst about R1 billion was mis-spent rather than to combat crime; we were not going to have a housing waiting list exceeding 600, 000 and an irregular expenditure of an astronomical R171 million and under expenditure of unconditional grants exceeding R215 million for the 2022/2023 financial year; we were not going to have the current challenges of shortage of beds, personnel in public health centres and more than a decade delays on the rebuilding of GF Jooste hospital; and we were not going to witness a total of R1.6 billion that could have been used to build brick and mortar schools being wasted on temporary solutions like maintenance, with R21 222 million which was meant which was meant for school nutrition, maths, science and technology teaching, and to assist learners with profound intellectual disabilities being returned to National Treasury.
We cannot wait for the ICJ judgement this afternoon to make true the plight of the world’s human face by stopping the brutality of the Israel government towards people of Palestine. The DA supports Israel and clearly any human rights loving citizen of this country and the world knows that our country and people are not safe under the DA and its right-wing allies.
Against this background, the ANC, SACP, COSATU and SANCO alliance will deploy its members led by Provincial Office Bearers as per the deployment below to the six public hearings in the province. We shall not allow any organisation or level of government to launch an attack on our Constitution. As the Preamble of the Constitution unambiguously states, among other clauses, we believe that:
“South Africa BELONGS TO ALL WHO LIVE IN IT” and “We therefore, through our freely elected representatives, adopt this Constitution as the SUPREME LAW OF THE REPUBLIC so as to…Build a UNITED and democratic South Africa able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of nations.”
As the alliance, if this Bill is not legally stopped, we will once again be called upon to tender the DA Capexit nexus in the Western Cape ungovernable to prevent the reincarnation of the modern-day apartheid system.
END.
Issued by: ANC, SACP, COSATU, and SANCO
ANC Deputy Provincial Secretary
Ayanda Bans
SACP Provincial Secretary
Benson Ngqentsu
COSATU Provincial Secretary
Melvern De Bruyn
SANCO Peninsula Regional Chairperson
Peter Lonwabo
For inquires:
ANC Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson
Muhammad Khalid Sayed
076 151 5265
SACP Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson
Lizwi Gegula
078 827 2274
COSATU Western Cape Provincial Secretary
Melvern De Bruyn
060 977 9027
SANCO Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson
Buntu Gwija
081 457 7862