Parties trade barbs in Western Cape legislature’s Freedom Day debate
Cape Town - Agriculture MEC Ivan Meyer has described the ANC as the party that has spent the past 30 years stealing the freedoms of South Africans.
Meyer, who is also the leader of government business in the provincial legislature, was contributing on Thursday to an ANC-sponsored debate on the topic, “Socio-economic freedom for some people in the Western Cape”, in honour of Freedom Day.
Meyer, who had the first bite of the cherry in the debate, took the opportunity to attack the ANC, calling it the party of “state capture and load shedding”.
He ridiculed the provincial ANC for failing to hold its provincial conference, and said: “They cannot even arrange a drunken party in a winery.”
In her contribution to the debate, ANC provincial spokesperson on social development, Gladys Bakubaku-Vos, spoke of the gains made by the ANC government since 1994 to improve the lives of South Africans.
She said these gains included broadening access to basic and higher education, especially through initiatives such as no-fee schools and financial aid to higher education students.
Bakubaku-Vos took aim at the DA’s governance in the province, quoting Winnie Madikizela-Mandela when she said: “We talk of a rainbow nation - in a country that remains dichotomised between black and white. We must acknowledge that the rainbow, in fact, is still a dream.”
EFF MPL Thembile Klaas said the DA-led provincial government spent its time and money fighting the poor.
“Instead of taking the opportunity to turn the Tafelberg property into social housing opportunities, as ordered by the Western Cape High Court, it was this government which continued to waste taxpayers’ money by litigating that progressive judgment all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
“This is a type of government that would rather spend money fighting against the poor (as was during apartheid) as opposed to using that money to change people’s lives for the better.”
Freedom Front Plus MPL Peter Marais urged voters at the next election to reject the ANC.
“If not, then they will take ANC struggle songs with them to their graves but leave nothing behind for their children to prosper,” he said.
Good Party MPL Shaun August said the DA had done nothing about spatial segregation in Cape Town, which he said still “paved the way for housing developments”.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za