DA leader John Steenhuisen at the party’s manifesto launch. Picture: Oupa Mokoena/Independent Newspapers
Something is deeply troubling with DA leader John Steenhuisen’s idea that the Western Cape is off limits and other parties shouldn’t dare attempt to campaign in the province.
His notion is based on the assumption that only the Western Cape functions properly, because of a DA government.
At the party’s manifesto launch recently, he stated: “For, while the eight ANC-led provinces crumble, there is one place left in this country where the hope that we all shared for a better future shines ever more brightly.
That place of hope is this DA-led Western Cape province ... and if the Western Cape works, that means that South Africa can work. To tell you that, if you do not often travel outside this province, you cannot even begin to realise how much you stand to lose if you do not vote for the DA in this election.”
What Steenhuisen and the DA won’t tell you is that the Western Cape ‘success’ they often boast about is only limited to certain areas.
For people of Nyanga, Manenberg, Imizamo Yethu, Hanover Park and Thembalethu in George, this rosy picture remains a pipe dream.
He is right, however, in his assertion that the Western Cape is a place of hope. But we argue that it’s a place for hope that one day Mitchells Plain children will have the same sporting facilities as their Bishops Court peers.
That one day the City of Cape Town responds to an overflowing sewage drain in Samora Machel with the same speed as when they are called in Camps Bay.
That one day Khayelitsha is allocated the same number if not more CCTV cameras as in Table View. That the pile of rubbish in most townships is collected timeously like everywhere else. That women and children in informal settlements do not have to fear for their safety when using communal toilets.
The point is that in the Western Cape some are more equal than the others.
This explains why Steenhuisen and the DA are fearful that the “political mercenaries in parties like the Patriotic Alliance, RISE Mzansi, GOOD and the National Coloured Congress” are also challenging it in the Western Cape.
If the DA did such a good job for all, it would have no sleepless nights over who campaigns in the Western Cape.
But as we have said countless times, it remains a tale of two provinces.
Cape Times