Zille rubbishes ANC’s ‘misleading’ claims

DAVID RITCHIE

The ANCs Lynne Brown makes a point during the debate on Premier Helen Zilles State of the Province address. Picture: David Ritchie

Cape Town - Western Cape premier Helen Zille has defended her government, hitting back at opposition MPLs who have accused her of being a “weak” and “absent” leader with no plan for the province’s poor.

In her response to the debate on the State of the Province address on Thursday, Zille said it was clear that none of the opposition parties in the legislature had either listened to or understood her address.

Zille lambasted ANC MPL and leader of the opposition in the legislature, Lynne Brown, saying she had plagiarised parts of Deputy Public Works Minister Jeremy Cronin speech which he delivered in the National Assembly last week, and presented it in the legislature as her own.

“This is pitiful,” Zille said. “The honourable Brown also gave some patronising advice for me to retire. I advise her to come out of retirement, where she’s been… We’ve had a rare sighting of the opposition in this house.”

Zille said Brown misled the house with statistics, allegedly lifted from Cronin’s speech, that the Western Cape had the highest youth unemployment rate in the country.

“The truth is the Western Cape has a far lower youth unemployment rate than any other province. Lower than Gauteng, lower than KZN and lower than the Northern Cape,” she said.

In her State of the Province address, Zille announced that the Development Bank of Southern Africa had granted R64 million which would go towards the Western Cape’s version of the youth wage subsidy.

She said this would support the creation of 1 000 new work opportunities over three years.

Referring to the opposition’s criticism of the provincial government’s housing plan, Zille said the DA government was still rectifying what the ANC had left behind.

“We have not just built top structures, but have also been rectifying top structures (houses) that the ANC left in a pitiful state.”

Regarding Brown’s claims of a purge of black women from the Western Cape government, Zille said of the 66 permanently employed civil servants that left the provincial government last year, 17 were African women and 16 were coloured women.

“Six of the 17 Africans went for better remuneration elsewhere, none died or were dismissed for misconduct, and 11 were transferred to other departments. The ANC was deliberately misleading the house. It’s a disgrace.”

On Tuesday, Brown told the legislature that five black department heads had been forced to leave the administration since Zille took control of the province.

In response on Thursday, Zille said this was “complete nonsense”.

In reply to Cope MPL Tozama Bevu, who on Tuesday claimed that Cape Town was the most unequal city in South Africa, Zille said: “I refer you to the UN State of World Cities Report 2010/11 in which they compare inequality in cities across the world.

“The most unequal city in South Africa, according to the report, is Johannesburg. Cape Town is the least unequal city in the country.”

clayton.barnes@inl.co.za

Cape Argus