DA must appeal to the country’s poor, says Cape Town Mayor
The DA’s Lewis-Hill says the economic legacy of Apartheid is etched into the landscape of every city and town in the country.
The Democratic Alliance’s (DA) Cape Town Mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis, has told an international audience that South Africa cannot claim progress since the 1994 transition into democracy, if the Apartheid economic and spatial planning legacy is still etched into the landscape of every city and town in the country.
He was speaking at a function held at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) about what the Cape Town experience can tell us about how to get South Africa right.
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MILLIONS OF UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE DON’T SEE A BETTER FUTURE, SAYS HILL-LEWIS
He said the Democratic Alliance (DA) will probably win the Western Cape in this year’s general election, but if they want to perform well nationally, they must appeal to the country’s poor.
“For as long as these young people and the nearly 11 million other unemployed people in our country feel that there is little prospect of a better future for them,” said Hill-Lewis, who was elected to Parliament in 2011 at the age of 24, at the time the youngest South African MP to be elected.
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THE DA’S LEARNED LESSONS FROM GOVERNING CAPE TOWN
The mayor said some of the differentiators to the DA’s approach to governance, that have made “Cape Town a city of hope” include the separation of powers away from the center and infrastructure investment.
‘The state of many South African cities and towns today is a lesson in what happens when you forego the maintenance of infrastructure,” he said.
Another lesson that Hill-Lewis shared was the importance of having a clear and bold sense of national ambition that is known and shared by everyone.
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT CITIZENS AGAINST NATIONAL GOVERNMENT FAILURES
He said local governments like the DA in the Western Cape, have a responsibility to protect their residents from the consequences of national government failures, especially in cases such as load shedding.
“We’re buying renewable and dispatchable energy from private energy producers. We’re helping thousands of households and businesses generate their own rooftop power. Through solar investment and repurchasing that excess power back from them,” he said.