Warwick Bruce Chapman

The eThekwini Municipality has, at great expense, installed a fibre optic network known as MetroFibre. Since its conceptual stage, MetroFibre has been envisaged as key to providing more cost effective and more accessible broadband services in the municipality’s attempt to bridge the so-called digital divide.

The Connected Schools project aims, in this initial phase, to connect 86 schools to the Internet in areas like Umlazi, KwaMashu, Phoenix, Inanda, Sydenham and Overport . Quite simply, the more access our learners have to the Internet, the more learning and skills development we are going to see taking place.

This sort of project, once properly implemented and maintained, is an example of the sort of positive interventions which municipalities can make, in partnership with other spheres of government, to effect positive change in the lives of people looking for a way out of poverty. We know that in the 21st century knowledge is power.

Providing access to the Internet means providing access to the single largest repository of Information on the earth. Let’s do much much more of it in the years to come.

The DA’s understanding of redress begins with recognising that poverty and inequality are the inescapable realities of life for the majority of SA citizens, and further that much of this reality is the consequence of our nation’s divided and discriminatory history. Statutory measures designed to discriminate against people of colour and to advantage a racial minority were part of not only the legacy of apartheid but of our colonial history too. The DA’s commitment to the open, opportunity society for all means that we cannot pretend that this history didn’t happen, nor can we just assume that our 1996 Constitution which enshrines equality will produce a more fair and just society without systematic policy interventions on our part.

Redress means a number of things for the DA. This paper sets out some of the key components of our position but is, of necessity, not all that could be said.

1. We recognise that achieving human dignity and human rights for all are issues for which all DA public representatives must be seen to be passionately committed. Actions or statements by organisations or individuals which abuse or devalue the worth of any of our fellow South Africans must be condemned without reservation. The DA must be seen to be at the forefront of any campaign which defends our Constitutional rights.

2. Practical measure to achieve redress include various forms of structural intervention to level the economic playing fields between rich and poor. This means supporting budget allocations in the areas which can eliminate the inter-generational transmission of poverty and inequality – especially in education, health, transport and housing. This means supporting dedicated funding and programmes which by transform the quality of people’s lives and which give them enhanced opportunities to achieve their own and their children’s potential. The delivery of quality and accessible public health care and schooling must be imperatives for the DA wherever we are in government.

3. The DA is opposed to the further racialising of society but we are supportive of creating economic opportunities for all those who are currently disadvantaged in terms of their employment skills or access to business contracts. Structural measures which rely simply on racial categories are crude and destroy national reconciliation and cohesion and the DA will look for other means of creating opportunities for all than the currently favoured BEE legislation. We need to support the efforts of local entrepreneurs, for small businesses and for companies which reflect SA’s diversity without resorting to racial bean counting or quotas. In terms of preferential procurement we need to create space for small emergent companies to compete and win market share against larger more established entities provided that the quality and efficiency of service delivery are not compromised.

4. Being committed to redress also means tackling the symbolic and very visible ways our society used to reflect the relative advantage of the few over the many. Whether in the naming of public places or institutions, or the celebration of national events and festivals, we need to seek the most inclusive solutions wherever possible. Names and places must reflect our truly rainbow heritage and become a celebration of our diversity not the cause of further division and racial enmity.

5. Ensuring food security for our people means protecting commercial agricultural production, but the DA supports creating opportunities for people from all communities to achieve access to farming skills and land. Opening up land ownership to all our citizens must go hand in hand with measures which will promote individual land ownership, enhanced agricultural productivity and ensuring that small-scale farmers have access to larger markets.

Mark Steele MPL is a DA member of the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Legislature and was previously an MP in the National Assembly.

I consider the issue of transformation of pilots a very important exception to what is happening in the rest of South Africa.

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.

In a discussion on Facebook yesterday, you berated the state of Education in the Eastern Cape and suggested that the ANC should be ashamed of the travesty.  Your friend Frank Julie commented that “Maybe those who vote for the ANC and still plan to do so should also hang their heads in shame! Come to think of it, these leaders did not elect themselves into power?” to which you responded by asking, “Frank who should we vote for?”

My suggestion to you, Zackie, was that you should vote for the lesser of the two evils (inferring the ANC and the DA), and you responded that for you, the ANC was just that.

Consider that choice: The ANC vs the DA.  Our liberation heroes turned power hungry, greed fuelled, race-obsessed non-deliverers vs the political party that fought apartheid during apartheid, and which fights today for all the ANC promised us as a people.  In short, racial nationalists vs non-racial liberal democrats. At least from my point of view, knowing the DA is not perfect, we are head and shoulders above, the lesser of the two evils.

But then me being a zealot (I believe in the DA, I promote the DA, I live the DA) makes it difficult to see beyond our own definition of the cause and our opponents.  For the record, my interpretation of our cause is a fair, safe and just South Africa where all who live in it have the means and opportunities to prosper and become all they want to in life.  Education is key.  Healthcare is key.  Ridding our society of violent crime is key.

I’m firmly of the opinion that South Africa has never known a good government. The DA is rapidly showing, as it implements what we’ve been speaking about for so long where we now have power, that South Africa could truly have a Government that is good and for all.

Zackie, the NP architected apartheid. The ANC and NP architected the new South Africa. The ANC has largely implemented it (reconciliation, transformation, economic liberalisation) and despite all the good policies it is crumbling now as a result of poor leadership and policies like cadre deployment (education, health, crime as examples).

It’s time that we as a people recognised the DA for what we are.  Our predecessors have been on the sidelines since the 1950′s, being pulled in when it counts (eg. writing the constitution), always punching well above our weight.  Today, we’re still committed to the genuine non-racial South Africa where all can live in peace beside one another.  The only difference now is that the liberals of new South Africa are no longer the whites Biko berated so harshly.

Like it or not, most aspects of DA government have shown themselves to be good for the people of South Africa.  Unemployment in the Western Cape is down.  Crime in Cape Town is down.  The provincial economy is now growing at a faster rate than KwaZulu-Natal.  Has it all been fixed? No.  Can it all be fixed? Probably not.  Have we made mistakes? Yes.  Ultimately, are we doing a much better job than the previous Government?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

The 25 clean audits in the Western Cape Government, for example, the first since 1994, and after just a year in Government, are good for the the poor.  While not service delivery in themselves, they mean less taxpayers’ money is being stolen by individuals for their own enrichment. More money in Government coffers means more resources to apply to the needs of our people.

I wonder often why it is you go to so much effort to paint the DA in as bad a light as you can. If I did that, you would ask me why I was so obsessed with attacking the ANC instead of promoting the alternative offered by the DA.

For example, we released details of how crime in Khayelitsha is down as a result of massive social and infrastructural intervention (which improve the quality of life beyond just crime), and you found some data which showed that a specific category of crime had gone up over the same period.  I wish it were that simple, but I’m convinced the reality is that you know the interventions taken by the City were aimed at creating an environment which is no longer conducive to crime.  The fact that some crimes have increased is through no lack to well-intentioned effort on the part of the City of Cape Town.

(Note to readers: The DA erred in calculating a 70% decrease where there was only a 24% decrease. Our shadow minister apologised and issued a correction.)

Ultimately, Zackie what you want is a Government which is accountable and would never get away with 43 chairs for 323 learners.  You can help achieve that through the mechanics of democracy itself.

Zackie Achmat, do you want to fix South Africa and set it back on the course we charted in the early nineties?  If so, its simple, make the ANC petrified of losing power…