How was your Sunday?

I reckon the answer depends on what electricity grid you find yourself on – thanks, Eskom and the ANC.

Load shedding aside, you’re probably able to instantly point to a number of other issues here in the Western Cape that need addressing.

The province does boast the lowest unemployment rate in the country, but issues like crime and the state of our train system are placed at the blame of the province’s ruling party.

In an opinion piece on the Daily Maverick, Alan Winde, the DA’s Premier candidate for the Western Cape (pictured above), has outlined what the party has planned going forward, and the ways in which the ANC seek to sabotage the effective governance of the province.

More on that in a bit, but first, Eskom:

The ANC finds itself in an uncomfortable position: It simply cannot compete with the DA’s record of service delivery. No matter which way you slice it, the Western Cape is the best-run province in the country…

Eskom has all but collapsed and the ANC national government still won’t agree on a plan to deal with the crisis. They actively sabotage Western Cape residents and businesses with continued blackouts, while looting continues at the entity.

The DA will fight to procure our energy directly from the independent power producers the ANC demonises, so that our energy supply is stable to support a growing economy. The DA-run City of Cape Town has already gone to court to fight for this right, and we have legalised domestic solar power production in 22 municipalities.

The Prasa saga is a national issue, but here in the Western Cape, we have seen far too many trains go up in flames.

Turning that mess around is going to require serious work:

Few things epitomise ANC failure quite like the state of our trains. Residents spend hours in unsafe queues, and lose jobs and education opportunities when so many trains are late or cancelled. Murders and assaults plague the railways, because the money supposed to cover security was instead funnelled to connected cadres.

As the DA, we will fight for the management of trains to be moved to the provincial level, so that the Western Cape can deliver a railway service that works and runs on time…

But we know that the ANC national government won’t give this up easily. Prasa is one of its favourite vehicles for looting, with billions disappearing into shady contracts with Gupta-linked companies.

Finally, Winde points to the ANC’s sabotage of policing in the province, by deliberately withholding resources in an attempt to undermine the efforts of those who seek to curb crime:

The fact is that the ANC national government has deliberately under-resourced Western Cape SAPS. We fought for years to have specialist units to fight gang violence, and the ANC refused all the way up until just before elections.

We simply cannot rely on the ANC to deal with crime in our communities all the way from Pretoria. This is why the DA will fight to have a provincial police service to keep our people safe.

Sadly, the real challenges in this province are born of the ANC: The crime that plagues our cities due to the ANC deliberately withholding police resources, the collapsed railway system due to ANC State Capture and the struggling economy wrought by finance ministers’ musical chairs. This is what patronage politics looks like

When a party cannot deliver any kind of meaningful, positive change (just look at the ANC’s latest electoral list, which is a who’s who of disgraced politicians), they go the route of undermining the governance of others.

Will this be the national election where the people of South Africa finally say enough is enough, and hit the ruling party where it hurts? Only time will tell, but if you don’t get out and vote on May 8, then don’t bother complaining.

[source:dailymav]