DA manifesto launch outlines key priorities

DA leader John Steenhuisen on Saturday outlined the party’s seven key priorities, which include ending load shedding and creating millions of jobs while addressing supporters as at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

Steenhuisen told thousands of supporters that the party’s key priorities form part of the DA’s rescue plan for South Africa from corruption and decline.

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MANIFESTO HIGHLIGHTS KEY PRIORITIES

The party’s key priorities which form part of the party’s rescue plan for South Africa include: 

• Creating two million new jobs;
• Ending loadshedding and water-shedding;
• Halving the rate of violent crimes
• Abolishing cadre deployment in favour of merit-based appointments
• Lifting six million people out of poverty;
• Tripling the number of Grade Four learners who can read for meaning; and
• Ensuring quality healthcare for all, irrespective of economic status.

Steenhuisen said unlike most other parties contesting the election, the DA’s rescue plan for South Africa is not pie in the sky.

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“Frankly, it is easy for parties that have no track record in government to get on a stage and read out a list of impossible promises that they know can never be delivered. But South Africans are tired of empty promises,” he said.

DA TO ENSURE KEY PRIORITIES ARE IMPLEMENTED

 “South Africans are tired of hearing about industrialisation plans when the factories where they used to work have closed due to loadshedding.

They are tired of hearing about smart cities when they don’t even feel safe walking the streets where they live. What the DA offers you today, are not populist promises, but solemn pledges,” said Steenhuisen.  

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The party leader said they will focus in government like a laser beam on implementing these seven key priorities. 

“Unlike Cyril Ramaphosa’s desperate efforts to whitewash his government’s failures, the DA’s manifesto is rooted in the reality of what South Africa is in 2024, not in the memory of what it promised to be in 1994,” he said.