With a little more than five months left until the 2021 local government elections set for October 27, Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen says his party has stolen the march on the country’s other political parties as they have long been prepared for the day.
Steenhuisen was earlier addressing the DA’s “Time for Change” virtual rally when he told his party’s supporters that the DA was marching confidently towards October 27 and was ready for the challenge and the contest.
“We started our preparations a long time ago, when others were still asleep, and we are ready to take our message to South Africans in every community across the country.
“Our public representatives are standing by. Our activists are standing by. Our staff members are standing by.
’’We know this won’t be a normal campaign, but nothing this past year has been normal. And the DA has risen to the challenge, consistently, like no other party,” Steenhuisen said.
He said that his party had done its homework, built up momentum and was now ready to take on the ANC in municipalities across the country and to defend their own municipalities.
“The list of municipalities in critical condition is now longer than the list of those that still function properly. Service delivery has collapsed in hundreds of towns.
’’Taps are about to run dry in the Eastern Cape. Budgets are being slashed everywhere, from housing to street maintenance to school toilets.
“Municipalities owe billions and billions to Eskom and are on the brink of being disconnected. The massive local government failure in recent years has left many communities almost unliveable. And people have had enough of this,” Steenhuisen said.
He further stated that the poverty that has swept across our country, ruining lives and ripping families apart, should offend and anger each and every single South African.
“That is our crisis. That is our number one enemy. That’s what stands in the way of our progress as a nation. And it is a crisis so big and so daunting that our government doesn’t even know where to start fixing it or how.
“Thirty million South Africans live below the poverty line. That’s half our population. 42% of working-age South Africans don’t have jobs. That’s almost half our adult population,” Steenhuisen said.
He added that the abject poverty affected people in a terrifying way and overshadowed every aspect of their lives as it took away their dreams and threatened their very survival.
“We dare not become accustomed to it. We dare not accept it as a given in our society, a problem so big and entrenched that there’s nothing we can do to solve it. Because poverty and unemployment do have solutions. We’re just not doing those things right now,” Steenhuisen said.
Political Bureau