Andile Lili
Cape Town - As the rain continues to fall, the housing backlog in the Western Cape stands at nearly 600 000.
Shamefully, the DA is more interested in servicing plots for more informal settlements in the province than building integrated human settlements.
Annually, the number of houses built in the Western Cape and the City of Cape Town in particular, as opposed to the euphemism of “housing opportunities”, has dropped significantly.
Infrastructure is the new name for building houses in the Western Cape and according to its MEC, Tertuis Simmers, there are only two projects currently in the pipeline in the Western Cape based on the Conradie Park model.
The Conradie Park model, now touted as a DA success, was actually an ANC initiative when the ANC was governing the Western Cape.
The Conradie Park model is a mixed-use development and seeks to integrate human settlements. Yet it has been more than 15 years and the DA-run Western Cape has still not completed the Conradie Park development.
In other words, according to MEC Simmers only 1 526 housing opportunities are envisaged to be rolled-out in the two projects and no time frames can be given to these developments.
The reality is that MEC Simmers, who also happens to be the newly-elected interim DA leader in the province, has been a complete failure in human settlements and therefore Premier Winde sought to give him the added responsibility of public works.
The new department takes away the public works portfolio from the old department of transport and public works and adds it to human settlements. At least now, MEC Simmers can portray to be delivering.
Yet not only has the MEC shifted his sights to public works because he can’t deliver in human settlements, he has now also seen the need to focus on the rising cost of living.
The ANC is sympathetic to the rising cost of living where inflation in South Africa currently sits at just over 6%. Yet this is nothing compared to countries such as the UK where inflation has hit double digits. However, we do not expect MEC Simmers to know anything about the global economy.
In fact, he and his party naively blame the crisis in Ukraine as the sole reason for the rise in costs of living and fail to point to the protectionist policies of the US together with the international isolation of countries such as Iran as causes of this inevitable international rise in cost of living.
Even worse still for the people of Cape Town where MEC Simmer’s party governs, instead of giving Capetonians a reprieve in rates and taxes, as ANC national ministers have done when it comes to the petrol price, the DA-run City of Cape Town has run rough-shod through council with increases in municipal taxes.
Coupled with this cost of living that MEC Simmers complains about there is now an over 5% hike in rates and a 5% increase in waste removal. It will cost households nearly an extra 10% in electricity tariffs and nearly 7% in water and sanitation. This, despite the projected annual inflation being just above 4%.
The DA-run City of Cape Town still charges households a flat R180 water levy and R140 electricity tariff.
Yet the DA leader in the Western Cape, MEC Simmers believes he should point a finger at the ANC and blame the ANC for the rise in costs of living. This is a shameful disgrace.
South Africans should know that where the DA governs even the struggling middle class suffers and not just the homeless.
Lili is the ANC spokesperson now for infrastructure in the Western Cape Provincial Legislature.
Cape Times