ANC takes on DA ''myth'' at WCape legislature

It is a myth that the Western Cape is the best run province in the country, the ANC claimed on Tuesday. 

Replying to Premier Helen Zille's State of the Province Address (Sopa), Khaya Magaxa, head of the ANC caucus in the province's legislature, said the former DA leader's speech had been full of untruths.

He said youth unemployment was actually lower before the DA captured the province from the ANC.

''In 2006, youth jobs were at 934 000. By 2012, this figure fell to 844 000. At the end of year 2014, there were 856 000 youth jobs in the Western Cape. This therefore means that 78 000 young people were no longer in employment in the Western Cape by the end of 2014.

''Twenty-one thousand young people become employed between 2009 and end of 2014. Perhaps the Premier should dedicate her last three years of premiership to those 21 000 young people who have lost their jobs under her watch.''

He said Zille had a long history of being ''anti-youth'' and had even closed Youth Development Agency in the province.

The province also has the highest percentage of white top and senior managers, he claimed.

In boasting about how the unemployment rate of the Western Cape was down to 20.6% in September 2015 from 24.8% in 2012, Zille had not mentioned that it was 19.9% when the DA took over in 2009 - the lowest in the country according to Magaxa.

''This therefore means that the unemployment rate went up under the premiership of Helen Zille and her alliance.''

Employment growth has been ''in line with the DA's core mandate of preserving white privilege and entrenching racial and economic inequalities,'' Magaxa claimed.

Magaxa, is the acting leader of the ANC in the Western Cape after Marius Fransman was suspended over an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman on the way to the ANC's birthday commemorations in Rustenburg.

During his reply Magaxa also ran through various statistics about employment in the province.

The latest Employment Equity Report showed that 63.8% of top management positions in the Western Cape are occupied by whites men, while only 2% are occupied by African men. White women occupied 14% of top management positions while African women occupied just 1% of top management positions in the province.

White South Africans made up 16% of Western Cape residents of working age in 2014, he said. However they benefited from 57% of total job growth in the province from 2009 to 2014.

Africans made 32% of the working population of the province but just got 16% of jobs. This is but one example of a government hell-bent on entrenching a racialised economy, Magaxa said.

He claimed that Zille was constantly in competition and not in partnership with local government.

The ANC leader also claimed that the City of Cape Town was planning to sell off four inner city sites for the development of shopping areas and up market apartment, and this showed that it was only interested in the elite.

"If anything Madam Premier, your speech was an absolutely joke and an insult to the people of the Western Cape.''

Bernard Joseph, the lone Economic Freedom Fighters member out of the 42 members of the Provincial Legislature also called Zille's speech ''a joke'' in a speech with the refrain ''good governance, se voet ''.

Like debate on President Jacob Zuma's State of the National Address in the National Assembly, legislature Speaker Sharna Fernandez also had her hands full controlling taunts and retorts across the carpet.

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