While the Eastern Cape Premier, Oscar Mabuyane, was busy boasting about new initiatives for the province, the clinic at the provincial hospital in Port Elizabeth was closed because the structure is unsafe.
Unemployment is rampant in the Eastern Cape, still, the ANC government lacks the political will to abandon its outdated ideologies and policy directions to unlock the province’s economy.
There is no sign of proper healthcare or education.
While the debate was ongoing, there were children risking their lives just to get to school every day.
There are learners from Tsitsikamma who have not been in school all year because someone unilaterally decided to change the existing Tsitsikamma Primary School into a high school.
The decision to convert the primary school to a high school has since been revoked, but now several Grade-10 learners are sitting at home because there are no classrooms available for them.
Residents are putting their lives at risk every time they visit public healthcare facilities in the province. This does not bode well for the planned National Health Insurance (NHI).
According to the Premier, the Eastern Cape has more than 11 400 megawatts of power in wind, solar, gas and battery storage to drive several projects of which the environmental impact assessments have already been either initiated or finalised.
He, however, stopped short of confirming the province’s actual current renewable energy generating capacity and whether the infrastructure needed to transmit the renewable energy to consumers does, in fact, exist.
Under ANC rule, the province’s municipalities are severely affected by financial management and the deployment of incompetent cadres.
According to the Auditor-General (AG), more than half of the Eastern Cape’s 39 municipalities are failing in some or other way. Eleven of its municipalities are totally dysfunctional.
The Premier’s State of the Province Address (SOPA) was nothing but election rhetoric full of promises that will not be kept.
The only solution is to oust the ANC from power.
