Download the “Project Reclaim” Dossier here.

See the DA press release and the Politics Web coverage.

14 September, 2011

Warwick Chapman, DA Spokesperson on Human Settlements in eThekwini

Yesterday I visited the Lamontville Transit Facility along with Cllr Hlanganani Gumbi and Cllr Sithembiso Ngema to investigate allegations of ANC branch-level corruption.

We met with about 50 community members who stated that the hundreds of people living at the camp were either documented, meaning they have papers entitling them to a council house at some stage in the future, or undocumented and paying rent. When we enquired who they were paying rent to, community members responded that the councillors committee members were taking the rent money. Since ward committees have not yet been established since the election, we enquired whether the committee they referred to was the local ANC Branch Executive Committee. The community members confirmed this to be the case.

They said they had been visited by the ANC Councillor Mr Sandile Ndlovu yesterday to inform them that those people without documentation would be evicted to make way for recently evicted shack dwellers.

I immediately called Head: Housing, Mr Cogi Pather, who confirmed that such evictions were not driven by housing department and since they manage the facility were illegal. He did, however, indicate that eThekwini Housing were seeking legal advice on how to remove the undocumented residents.

Thereafter Cllr Ngema called and informed W/O Khawula from Lamontville SAPS of the situation and requested that SAPS members be advised accordingly and be on stand-by should any action take place.

Today just after 11:00, nearby evicted shack dwellers and residents from the nearby Community Residential Unit (Hostel), descended on the transit facility threatening the residents and telling them they were to be kicked out.

Just before twelve today, eThekwini Municipality truck NDM7010 and Vehicle NDM6998 marked “Security Management”, supported by armed personnel and moved in on the Lamontville Transit Camp.

I again confirmed with Head: eThekwini Housing that they do not have authority yet to evict anyone from that facility. Allegations that the local ANC BEC has been renting out empty rooms would suggest that the same BEC and is now using the council to evict its ‘tenants’.

All indications are that local ANC structures in Lamontville have been illegally renting units in the transit camp and are now scrambling to evict these people to make way for the intended use of this facility.

As at 12:15, we are advised that evictions have started, the locks to units are being smashed and people’s belongings removed.

We URGENTLY call on SAPS to enforce the law and require that legal documentation be presented proving the basis for the evictions, failing which the action be stopped immediately. We have just requested Durban Flying Squad intervene.

We wish a formal investigation to be instituted into the allegations that undocumented residents were renting their units from a local political structure or persons in said structure.

MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Cllr Warwick Chapman
083 7797 094

Here are two opinions on the effect of the formation of NFP on the KZN political environment:

ANC Project
The NFP is a very sharp, ANC supported move to finally collapse a very sick IFP. They will go into coalitions throughout the province installing some ANC mayors and some NFP mayors. In time we will see a DA/ID style MOU which sees the NFP collapsed into the ANC.

The DA will continue to be a sideshow to the main act of ANC/NFP kill IFP. The DA will grow less than the ANC will grow and will have to wait until the next LGE to finally start making some inroads.

DA Coalitions
The NFP will not go into an Allaince with the ANC. Most NFP followers love the IFP as a party but hate its leaders. The bigger picture here is 2014, the NFP will be looking to entice IFP voters and they can’t do that by sleeping with the ANC. There is a greater possibility of an alliance with the DA than with the ANC. Remember the NFP is taking ANC people in numbers even though it is not shown in the media.

1. The DA delivers twice as many houses in the City of Cape Town than the ANC were able to when they ran the City. Across all DA-run local governments and in the Western Cape the DA delivers more, better quality houses than any other party.

2. The Gauteng Planning Commission’s Quality of Life Survey ranks the DA-run Midvaal Municipality as the province’s top municipality for quality of life. This year Midvaal’s achieved its 8th unqualified audit report in a row. Clean, effective local government.

3. The DA understands what the word “accountability” really means. The DA fires corrupt politicians and government officials instead of moving them somewhere else.

4. While unemployment increased by 1% in all other provinces in the aftermath of the recession, it decreased by 1% in the Western Cape, driven by Cape Town’s healthy economic growth. More than 50000 people move to the Western Cape every year and unemployment is still dropping. Better Government, more jobs!

5. The Democratic Alliance allocates significant resources every year to invest in a year long development programme for inspiring young leaders – the Young Leaders Programme develops tomorrow’s great leaders today.

6. The DA-run Western Cape Government became the first provincial government since 1994 to be given a clean audit by the Auditor General of South Africa – and it achieved this after only one year in office.

7. The DA-run City of Cape Town reduced crime in the CBD by 90% and the Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading programme reduced crime in Khayelitsha by 24%.

8. The Cooperative Governance Department’s 2010 Universal Household Access to Basic Services survey showed that nine in ten residents of the DA-run Cape Town have “universal access” to basic services – a higher proportion than any other metro in the country. On each of the individual service delivery metrics, the DA’s performance stands head and shoulders over that of the ANC-run metros.

9. The DA is the most multi-racial party in South Africa and has a proud history of fighting for liberty through the Apartheid years and in the new South Africa.

10. The DA tables significantly more parliamentary, provincial and council questions than the rest of the opposition parties put together, exposing more dodgy dealings, wasted expenditure and mismanagement than any other party. The DA tables more reports, policy proposals and discussion documents than any other party. DA politicians do the job the public pay them to do!

(Bonus reasons)

11. Helen Zille, now Premier of the Western Cape, won World Mayor of the Year in 2008 for her efforts in leading the turnaround of the City of Cape Town in only 2 years. Helen Zille is a courageous and principled woman who has been fighting for liberty from her younger days as the journalist who uncovered the murder of Steve Biko to today’s tough leadership during a difficult political climate.

12. BBBEE deals in the City of Cape Town have increased dramatically since the DA took over the municipality. DA-run municipalities grant tenders using an open-to-the-public tendering system which applies BBBEE legislation as it was intended – to empower a broad base of black entrepreneurs.

13. The DA is a party that delivers for all and prioritises growth and job creation. The DA is more effective in government because DA-run municipalities focus resources government’s core functions: basic service delivery, revenue collection, bulk infrastructure development, local economic development.

Now before I go into this, keep in mind that the politicians that count when it comes to national policy issues like transformation are almost always Members of Parliament and pretty much all of them fly at least twice a week.

Transformation is necessary in South Africa. Like it or not, our history and the momentum it generated has produced a skewed society and a bias towards whites out-performing everyone else. Indeed, since 1994, whites have, on average, benefited the most – outstripping everyone else in earnings.

Government intervention in order to ensure other races, but blacks in particular, have the same opportunities as whites do is all but obligatory. How we go about that, however is where the DA differs from the ANC.

For us it is about producing what we call an “opportunity society” through great quality basic and tertiary education and skills development, good healthcare and financial support where it is deserved.

In 1997, by contrast, the ANC promulgated a policy now commonly known as “Cadre Deployment”. It forcefully transformed almost every corner of our society by placing ANC cadres in positions of leadership and authority on the basis, first and foremost that they were ANC people and only secondarily that they had the wherewithall to get the job done.

And the results are well known. CIPRO is a recent example. Numerous failed municipalities are examples. Eskom is an example.

Where those failures are challenged and cadre deployment is blamed, invariably the race card and/or the accusation that we are resisting positive change in South Africa is levelled. And despite the failures, we regularly hear calls from politicians (and now ABSA) that the pace of transformation be stepped up.

But, and this brings us back to pilots, have we ever heard a politician make a serious effort to transform our white male dominated airbus jockeys? No, I believe not. We’ve never heard them say, “to hell with your stringent requirements, I want a black pilot!”.

I’m firmly of the belief that this is because, unlike in the case of CIPRO for example, the potential repercussions of vaulting someone into a role as a pilot to which they are not suitably trained and experienced is, well, death. Death of yourself the politician, perhaps, and the death of everyone else in the plane.

So, they say nothing about it. If the ANC was so very keen to see more black pilots, they would ensure that SAA is provided with the budget to re-establish their Academy.

I believe that many black candidate pilots are failing to qualify, not because they are incapable, but because of the abysmal quality of our now decimated education system.

I am certain that if you surveyed the black pilots flying in South Africa now, you will find that most of them went to ex-Model C or Private schools where they got the sort of quality maths and science education required to make it as a pilot.

The travesty that is our education system would be, I’m pretty certain, the top priority of a DA government in South Africa, followed closely by health, crime and economic development (job creation).

So that’s that. The ANC don’t really care if someone unqualified and with no experience takes over a sewage works, because if it fails, and someone makes enough of a stink (eek) about it, there’ll always be someone, somewhere who can fix it – at a price. BUT, a pilot who is not up to scratch has far more serious, more personal implications for an ANC MP – death is not something one tends to get over very easily – so they don’t push the issue.

As a true liberal, I should laugh at such a comment, but in Africa, considering the post-colonial track record, I most certainly do appreciate the ANC for having taking reconciliation seriously.

However, as to recognising the contribution of the ANC since 1994, I struggle a little more. South Africa should have progressed further and improved the lives of more people than it has in the last 16 years.

The state of education in particular, is a travesty. Education is such a crucial issue to the empowerment of the poor and one which many young ANC members died fighting for. One cannot fathom why the ANC didn’t handle it in the world class manner it did Finance and SARS.

The poor management of the Department Health means facilities and human resources cannot cope with the burden of healthcare and, again, it is the poor ANC voter who suffers the most.

Then there’s service delivery, crime, land reform, agriculture, water and a hundred other areas which government is responsible for which have been poorly managed and are now not serving the country the way they should be.

The ANC was a most noble and historic organisation but its legacy as a liberator and moral compass of the world is being quickly replaced by that of just another a corrupt, inefficient and power abusing governing party.

There was a time during the liberation struggle when it was acceptable within your organisation for people like Robert McBride and Andrew Zondo to kill in the name of the fight for freedom.  During that time also, your organisation sang songs promoting further violence against the racist white oppressors at whose hands so many black South Africans suffered.

The ANC and its Allies fought against a corrupt racist nationalist Government which believed in white supremacy and denigrated black South Africans in both legislation and language.

Our hard won democracy signalled the end of that struggle era and we were ushered into the miracle of the new South Africa under the leadership of Madiba and urged to work together to create a nation where all would prosper.  Our Constitution and the rule of law no longer allows the ANC or any other person or organisation to accept violence or killing as a means to an end.  Further outlawed was the legislation and hate speech which had been the main instruments of the Apartheid state’s oppressive regime.

How then can it be acceptable to the ANC that a struggle song which uses language of violence and racism should be allowed to be wheeled out of the pre-Democracy era museum and again performed to crowds by leaders as influential as the President of the ANC Youth League?

Nobody will soon forget that there was a song which included the words “dubulu ibhunu” (Ayesaba Amagwala), just as nobody will unfortunately soon forget that putrid K-word which was used to denigrate black South Africans.  The fact that these two forms of hate speech should be banned out of use altogether does nothing to deny their previous existence and prominence.

The vacuum of decisive leadership and apparent lack of commitment to the letter and spirit of our non-racial democracy in the past months has left me wondering what the legacy of the ANC will be.  Will the ANC be remembered as the liberators of South Africa and the architects of Africa’s first successful post-colonial society? Or, will they be remembered, as ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe will, as the creators of a kleptocracy which betrayed those people who fought and died in its name?

Those of us in the opposition find we are fighting what is now almost certainly a corrupt racist nationalist Government which believes in black supremacy and discriminates against white South Africans in legislation and now condones denigrating them in language too.  Is this how you wish to be remembered?

I appeal to you to show leadership, reinforce the non-racial spirit of our democracy, and in the best interests of our future, reorientate your organisation such that your legacy is one you could be proud of when your great grandchildren ask about the ANC and the nation it united.

Yours in South Africa

Warwick Bruce Chapman

Being a City or Town Councillor means more than just being one of the “bosses” of that town, attending meetings and deciding how to spend the available funds; it also means using your skills and resources to solve problems on the ground by supporting, motivating and monitoring municipal officials and ensuring work is done.

Councillors of the years gone by were pure policy makers.  The reality of the current job description of a Councillor is far more wide ranging and much of the time involves ensuring things which should “just happen” actually get done.  Councillors who work hard and manage to keep a constructive and positive approach to their jobs will find they get great satisfaction out of a job where they know they are making a significant positive difference to their community and municipality each day.

Having said that, you must be tough and have somewhat of a rhino skin.  The ANC are rude, extremely racist at times, and openly abuse their power to the benefit of their own.  As the DA continues to make inroads into the traditional ANC support-base, the ANC is becoming more confrontational and, basically, taking the DA more seriously.

Be prepared to stand up for what is right and just.  And be prepared to lose.  In the end, however, our efforts never go in vain because we are the conscience that the ANC has dispensed with, and until we are able to govern in towns and provinces across South Africa, our role is thus of critical importance.

Fight the good fight.  Become a DA Councillor.

– Warwick Chapman, Cllr – eThekwini

I believe it is quite clear that one of our jobs as a political party is to show our opponents up when their actions and practice differ from their words and policies. This is an important component of the greater task of presenting our party as a capable alternative to that opponent. So, for example, when the ANC attempts to show the DA up by accusing us of being racist and then failing to back it up with facts, the DA, through the Crooked Comrades Monitor is not only accusing the ANC of accommodating criminality within its ranks but backing it up with facts.

In the same article, ANC spokesperson, Brian Sokutu said that the deployment of ANC comrades into public and private sector positions was not the business of the DA. Unfortunately on this point Mr Sokutu is wrong. The word public in reference to public sector jobs means appointments are everyone’s business since it is our money being spent, and unfortunately for the ANC, the DA is included in that “everyone”. The Crooked Comrades Monitor deals only with appointments in the public sector since President Zuma came to power on the back of promises to fight crime and corruption.

Were the ANC to attempt to build a similar list for the DA they would find that the Democratic Alliance has at the first hint of any suspicion of illegal activity, suspended membership of the person or terminated the relationship with the organisation involved pending full investigation.

The fact of the matter is that the ANC tolerates corruption and criminalism within its own ranks. How can a government stand up on a soap box and berate corruption as an evil of society, an enemy of the national democratic revolution and then at the same time allow this extent of complicity with corruption and criminalism to continue?

What South Africa needs is a clean, efficient and correctly resourced public service and representatives, and in order to feed the current climate of demand for service delivery, that should the single highest priority for the ruling party.