By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) has accused the Democratic Alliance (DA) of using the Western Cape Provincial Powers Bill to appease its conservative voters.
Last year, the DA tabled the bill in the Western Cape provincial legislature, citing the lack of provision of basic services, including energy, policing and rail at national level when the national government falls short, as the reasons for the bill.
Over the weekend during the NEC meeteing, the ANC said it would not allow any attempts “to bring back apartheid through a back door”.
“The ANC will not falter and never allow any attempt to bring back apartheid through a back door,” said Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Thembi Nkadimeng.
“We call on all our people, particularly in the Western Cape, to reject this bill”.
She said the bill wanted to take the country back to racial segregation.
“(We) will never go back to the dark days of racial segregation. Three of the Western Cape’s legal advisers have declared the bill unconstitutional.””She said the DA had failed to use the powers it already had to transform the Western Cape in its entirety.
Nkadimeng cited agriculture, with “less than 3% of agricultural land owned by blacks in the Western Cape; this includes Africans, coloureds and Indians combined”.
She said that in education, the province was failing to provide enough maths and science teachers to schools in need, and in health “the DA has failed to build a new hospital in the Cape Flats but is opposed to the NHI”.
“The people of the Western Cape are part of a united South Africa and the plan is outrageously divisive. We will defeat this bill and it will never become law.”
Public hearings into the Provincial Powers Bill are expected to kick off in Worcester on Monday.
The DA said the bill aims to empower provincial and local governments to address issues where the national government has failed to deliver services to residents.
Some of those functions include policing, rail, energy and trade.
“The bill creates a framework for the province to fully assert its existing constitutional and legislative powers and to get more powers delegated from national government,” the DA said.
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Video Courtesy of MYANC.