Cape Town – During the launch of the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Cape Town manifesto on Tuesday, sitting and candidate Mayor Patricia de Lille took aim at the rival African National Congress (ANC), saying they were full of hot air.
Questioned by members of the media about her views of the ANC and their Local Government elections campaign, De Lille said the ANC’s attempt at a manifesto rested solely on trying to paint the DA as racist and uncaring. The DA controls the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape province, which is the only one of nine provinces not under control of the ANC.
“They [the ANC] are undermining the intelligence of the voter by trying to make every issue about race,” said De Lille.
In fact, she said that those who spread “the myth that the DA care more for rich people than the poor are actually anti-transformation”.
De Lille continued her go at the party, saying the ANC were “full of hot air”. She also made mention of embattled provincial leader Marius Fransman and what she termed the party’s lack of an elections manifesto.
“Even his own party didn’t want him back,” she said about Fransman, who has been out of office while he is being investigated for allegedly sexually harassing a colleague.
De Lille added that when it came to covering provincial ANC local government election stories, journalists need not write up original pieces as they could simply “copy and paste” what had been said before, namely calling the DA-run City of Cape Town “racist”.
Besides the ANC, De Lille also dealt with recent and recurring big issues in the City such as gang violence and housing.
With more than an estimated 60 percent of salaries from low-income households going to transport, De Lille said that if the DA were to be re-elected, all of the City’s future development would be near existing transport routes or where routes were marked for development. This was already an existing programme within the City known as “transport-oriented development”.
On integrating into the city centre those currently living on the periphery, De Lille referred to the proposed multi-million-rand Clifton development project for which she had received criticism.
She said that “if anyone cared to listen and look”, they would have discovered that R60 million from the sale of the identified site was meant for bringing low-income residents into the city centre.
Also on housing issues – and another “hot topic”, that of student affairs – De Lille mentioned that students from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology would soon “liven up the city centre after 5pm” as a piece of land owned by the City had been given to the institution for student housing.
De Lille also referred to service delivery differences between so-called rich and poor areas, as well as the allegation the City only delivered to the leafy suburbs.
“We are charging the rich people to live in their houses and then we use that money to cross-subsidise,” she said.
De Lille said the DA-led City could not shoulder the blame for what the Apartheid government had designed and that as wealthy suburbs already had what they needed, the City did not provide them with any additional services.
On areas affected by gang viokence – especially Manenberg – De Lille said it was incorrect to say the DA and the City only cared about engaging communities ahead of elections.
“It is not true that we are really just stepping up before an election,” she said.
Instead, said De Lille, the DA-led City had spent years interacting with affected communities. She referenced the Metro Police’s Stabilisation Unit which now registered 2,800 arrests per year, an increase from the 300 when the Unit began two years ago.
She said the City would continue with its two-pronged intervention into gang-affected areas, responding with police, while tackling the social issues driving gangsterism.
“We feel we have made great progress in the past five years,” said De Lille of her time in office.
“But there is still a lot more work to do. That is why I am standing for re-election.”
African News Agency