The devastating unemployment crisis that has engulfed the Eastern Cape has been brought into sharp focus in Karoo towns such as Cradock and Middelburg (Inxuba Yethemba Municipality), Graaff-Reinet (Dr Beyers Naude Municipality) and Pearston (Blue Crane Route Municipality).
While conducting meetings in these small towns, it has become abundantly clear that municipalities are failing to provide even the most basic of services, which is killing off businesses and driving away investment, leaving residents destitute and broken. (see pictures here, here and here)
No business wants to invest in towns where raw sewerage flows freely down the streets in front of their premises, where roads are disintegrating from lack of maintenance, where rubbish sits and ferments on street corners, uncollected for weeks on end, attracting flies and vermin.
No business can run a successful operation if the basics such as clean water and a stable electricity supply cannot be provided.
The lack of service delivery has destroyed these town’s local economies, with businesses leaving in search for better prospects, taking their jobs with them.
The impact that this has had on these communities is heart breaking. Time and again, as we went from door to door, people spoke of their hardships and the devastating impact that rampant unemployment has had on their lives.
Unemployment is one of the biggest social ills in these towns and this can be directly attributed to non-existent service delivery by ANC governments in these municipalities.
Effective service delivery creates a conducive atmosphere for investment and that leads to job creation, prosperity and human dignity.
Good governance creates jobs, whilst poor governance destroys jobs.
In the Eastern Cape, local government is collapsing after decades of ANC corruption and mismanagement:
- Eskom is owed over R2 billion
- 14 Municipalities are financially unsustainable
The DA has proven it can govern successfully in the Eastern Cape and since taking over the government of the Kouga Municipality in 2016, we have achieved some of the following successes:
- Kouga passed its first-ever R1 billion budget in 2020.
- 1 596 households have received access to electricity for the first time.
- 1 000 streetlights and floodlights were retrofitted with energy and planet saving LED lights since 2019.
- Kouga is home to Africa’s first eco-friendly plastic road.
- A cutting-edge waste water treatment plant was constructed at a cost of R85,6 million.
- 1 827 historic title deeds were delivered to the rightful beneficiaries since 2018.
I will write to the Eastern Cape MEC for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Xolile Nqatha, to yet again bring the plight of people of the Eastern Cape Karoo to his attention.
We simply cannot allow this ongoing degradation to continue.
The DA believes that it can save these towns and municipalities, because the DA gets things done.