Cape Town - The Western Cape is a hideout for racists who do not want a black government and the country could run more effectively with fewer provinces, ANC leaders said yesterday.
Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, a speaker at a provincial ANC meeting, yesterday likened the Western Cape to Orania, a Northern Cape town where only white Afrikaners are allowed to live.
Joemat-Pettersson is also a member of the ANC’s national executive committee.
She said the Western Cape had become painted as a place where “there is an influx of the rural poor from the Eastern Cape”.
“Those who do not believe in black majority rule, who still want to perpetuate white minority (rule), have moved from Gauteng to the Western Cape (and), have moved from Northern Cape,” she reportedly said.
“Those who still want to be racists have descended on your shores. You have new Jan van Riebeecks here.
“It is never mentioned that there is a coalition of white anti-left and anti-progressive forces here. The province is systematically not moving towards federalism, they are moving to an Orania, an independent state of the Western Cape.”
These claims were made at the party’s two-day provincial general council that concluded at Shalimar Gardens in Surrey Estate yesterday.
The meeting was held to discuss policy issues to take to the party’s national general council this week.
Proposals inked this weekend will feed into the ANC’s national conference in 2017 where the party will map policies that could change how the government operates.
Top of the agenda this weekend was a proposal that certain provinces should fall away in a bid to strengthen the national government. Western Cape provincial chairman Marius Fransman said the provincial ANC would push the party’s national leadership to dissolve some provinces to “ensure better governance and more effective service delivery”.
“There is unnecessary red tape that emerged from provincial powers. Even when the ANC was in power in the Western Cape, we raised this issue,” said Fransman.
“We need fewer provinces so there will be more alignment with national government and stronger local government.
“Has this system of nine provinces and three spheres had negative, unintended consequences on our project of nation building, reconciliation and social cohesion as it allows for a culture and elements of federalism?”
“Has this system not resulted in feeding and the strengthening of the neo-liberal political, social and economic right-wing agenda?”
Fransman said the ANC at the dawn of democracy had proposed a two-tier governance system instead of the current set-up. “We should not forget the system we chose then, of nine provinces and three spheres, was not the ANC’s ideal position.
“Ours was a position based on the culture of democratic centralism with a two-tier system of national and local government and a unitary developmental state.”
Fransman said they would “lay the basis for further inquiry” when meeting at a national level.
“We must do a proper assessment of whether, in fact, our current three spheres is, in fact, still relevant, effective, efficient and economical 21 years after democracy,” he said.
“We need to ask the deeper questions of whether or not the system of governance we agreed to, as opposed to the one or two we proposed during our negotiation period, has in fact not led to a state that is more fragmented and less functionally coherent.
“We must assess whether or not we still require district municipalities and whether or not they should be increased or decreased.”
Fransman said the ANC “compromise” of the current system had been reached to “address the fears of the then-apartheid government and its mainly white supporters as well as its Bantustan leaders”.
“This system was therefore not one based on our ideological foundations nor based on effective and efficient governance systems. Rather it was a compromise to avoid a civil war and accommodate the undefeated enemy.”
Fransman said the provincial ANC would also propose that “state intervention in the economy and the provision of services in the quest for social transformation” be considered.
ANC provincial secretary Faiez Jacobs said participation in policy transformation was vital. “This is an opportunity for us to review what’s working or not in the ANC and whether our policies work in government.”
Provincial treasurer Maurencia Gillion said it was important to raise the “main social conditions of the Western Cape and how policies can be sped up to improve those conditions”.
“We need to focus on how we can fast-track transformation.”
- Weekend Argus