Posts Tagged ‘Election 2021’

IEC review of Election date completely unnecessary: DA ready to go to polls

May 21, 2021

The DA does not agree that a review of this year’s Local Government Election date is necessary, and we reaffirm that the DA and South African voters are ready to go to the polls this year.

For the DA, the election must proceed on 27 October 2021. We are ready.

South Africans facing increasingly dire circumstances are crying out for change, which can only come through the ballot box at regular and timeous elections.

It is, in fact, every citizen’s constitutional right to participate in regular elections to make their voice heard and to vote out failing and corrupt governments.

Our participatory democracy rests on the IEC’s mandate to conduct free, fair, and regular elections.

The IEC has shown, through the series of by-elections over the past seven months that it can hold completely free and fair elections, in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic.

By-elections since November last year have seen good, and in some cases, above-average turnout which shows that voters are keen to come out, safely, and cast their ballots despite the pandemic.

During these by-elections campaigning has been free and fair, political operations have adapted as required, and voters have been reached by their parties on the ground through digital media and an array of other communication platforms.

The IEC has, to their credit, run very successful Covid-19-compliant by-elections in all instances. Queues have been social distanced, masks have been mandatory, and equipment has been sanitised, which bodes well for the 27 October local government election in every ward across South Africa.

The IEC has already proven that elections can be held during a pandemic. There is no reason why it cannot proceed with this year’s Local Government Elections as planned.

Being ready for the election later this year means that the DA is well underway with our planning and preparation for the campaign, and we will be first party out of the blocks this weekend as we hold our Time for Change Rally – the first national DA rally in the lead-up to our campaign.

We are excited and very proud to hold our Time for Change Rally on Saturday, connecting thousands of DA members and supporters in over 400 watch parties in locations across the country.

Our rally this Saturday is a bold statement of intent: The DA is ready for Election 2021, and our preparation toward 27 October is proceeding at full steam.

The unnecessary review of the election date, announced by the IEC today, is not about empowering voters, it is about an unprepared, weak, and divided ANC which has no momentum to campaign, and an increasingly irrelevant EFF which has failed to adapt campaign operations during the pandemic.

The IEC should not bow to the whims of these party-political issues. The Constitutional right of each and every South African to cast their vote should not be determined by any party’s preparedness in any election season.

This election is about South Africans and the future of our country, not the ANC.

South Africa needs this year’s local government election to proceed, to give effect to voters’ rights to choose their governments, and to ensure accountability at local government level. South African voters desperately want change. The IEC must give them the right to it.

Local Government Elections are coming up in 2021! Visit check.da.org.za to check your voter registration status.

John Steenhuizen

Leader of the Democratic Alliance

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Why we need to keep Kouga DA in 2021

April 28, 2021

Almost all the municipalities in the Eastern Cape are under extreme financial distress.

Almost all of them owe massive amounts of money to Eskom. Most of them can’t pay their creditors. At least 14 of them are considered financially unsustainable.

Local government has all but collapsed across the entire province, except for one clear exception,  and that is Kouga Municipality.

The municipality of Kouga has had an outright DA government since 2016, and the difference this has made to every single aspect of the municipality’s governance cannot be ignored.

Since 2016, almost 1600 households in Kouga have received electricity for the first time. New water treatment works have been constructed and old ones upgraded.

Many kilometres of road have been resurfaced and tens of thousands of potholes have been repaired.

60 new vehicles were added to the municipality’s fleet and a further 130 vehicles and plant were refurbished.

In 2018 and 2019 alone, more than 1800 historic title deeds were handed over to rightful beneficiaries, and further 110 have been handed over so far this financial year.

Kouga now also has the country’s first eco-friendly road built with waste plastic, as well as over 1,000 streetlights and floodlights fitted with energy-saving LED lights.

And last year Kouga passed its first-ever billion Rand budget.

In a sea of local government failure in the Eastern Cape, Kouga stands out as an island of excellence. And again, this is no coincidence. Given a full mandate to execute our plan, this is what the DA does.

We don’t steal. We don’t empower our friends and family. We don’t protect the corrupt. We simply do the basics of good governance, and we do it well.

And this means that wherever the DA governs, people have a better chance of building a life of value for themselves and their families.

A better chance at freedom.

If that sounds like the kind of place you would like to live in, you need to make the first move. You need to make sure your name is on the voters roll now so that you can cast your vote in October.

And when the 27th of October arrives, you need to go out and do your bit to ensure that Kouga remains with a government that can deliver.

Don’t think the other voters will do this for you. Because that’s when you end up and handful of votes short of a proper government.

Yes, there is plenty a DA government can do for you, but the first move is all yours.

John Steenhuizen

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Shaping the DA to shape the future

June 15, 2019

Mark my words, the DA has a central role to play in securing a prosperous future for South Africa. No amount of hype around a “new dawn” can obscure the reality on the ground, which is that South Africa is sliding backwards.

That reality is reflected in four stark facts about our economy that have come to light in the past month.

First, broad unemployment (which includes those who have given up looking for work) is now at a record-high of 9.9 million people, equating to 38% of our workforce. In the first quarter of 2019, unemployment grew in every province except the DA-run Western Cape, where it fell.

Second, our economy contracted by 3.2% (annualized) in the first three months of this year, the biggest quarterly contraction in a decade.

And it is unlikely to grow substantially anytime soon because: third, net investment (as measured by gross fixed capital formation) declined in the first quarter of 2019 for the fifth consecutive quarter, by 4.5%.

And fourth, the recent resignations of the CEOs of Eskom and SAA suggest that the government is simply not prepared to take the necessary steps to fix our state-owned entities.

These outcomes put us in the perilous situation of rising impoverishment and discontent. They will persist until we South Africans reform our economy.

We need to fundamentally change the way we do things and that means facing down the various special interest groups that benefit from the status quo.

This will be very difficult for Ramaphosa’s government to achieve because they rely on these groups for political support.

Thus the DA must succeed in its mission of uniting South Africans around the principles required for a successful state: the rule of law, non-racialism, and a market-driven economy coupled with a capable state that generates opportunities for all.

We need to succeed soon, because we South Africans are still grappling with our 20th century challenges even as 21st century challenges of technology and climate change hurtle towards us.

Our objective is to occupy the centre of South Africa’s political landscape. We are not a party for the right or for the left. Nor do we aspire to represent the interests of any specific groups. Our objective is to promote the national interest.

The DA has experienced rapid growth since 1994, and especially since 2016, when the number of people we govern for (through provincial, metro or municipal governments) almost tripled from around 6 million to around 15 million people. We are a different, more diverse and much larger animal now than the party we were a few years ago.

These changes have brought on challenges associated with increased complexity. We have therefore initiated a comprehensive party-wide review, to assess what changes we need to make to our structures, systems and policies going forward in order to keep growing support for our mission.

Our future is about doing the basics right: building trust amongst South Africans through activism, branches and campaigning, and through good governance. Overall, our governments are in great shape to continue to deliver. But we are now more focused than ever to demonstrate the DA difference in government, and to create thriving market-based economies where we govern.

So we’ll be strengthening our Governance Unit to give it the clout it needs to provide the requisite support to our provincial, metro and municipal governments so they can deliver the best possible service to citizens.

And we’ll be working actively to build national support for economic reform. In 2018, we postponed a summit on growth and redress in order to focus on our 2019 election campaign. That summit is now firmly on the agenda.

Please join us as we shape the future of our nation.

SIgn up to become a DA member online. Click this link to sign up now

Warm regards,

Mmusi Maimane

DA leader

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