THE Democratic Alliance (DA) and the African National Congress (ANC) in the Western Cape yesterday continued their war of words with the two parties trading barbs over "caring for the poor".
Tensions reached new levels last month when the youth league threatened to make the province and Cape Town ungovernable until its demands were met. These demands include "better service delivery" and that the province scrap its plan to close 27 underperforming schools.
At a press briefing yesterday to react to Western Cape Premier Helen Zille’s statements last week that the province was spending most of its budget on the poor, ANC provincial secretary Songezo Mjongile said it was evident that "apartheid was alive and well in the Western Cape".
"We want to invite people from other provinces to come and see that apartheid is alive and well in this province ... the blacks are excluded from the economy ... this DA government does not care about the poor, all they want to do is maintain the status quo," Mr Mjongile said.
He said the ANC in the province would consider various options, including peaceful protests to make sure that the interests of the poor were advanced. The ANC’s leader in the provincial legislature, Lynne Brown, said the DA had not produced any policy to assist the poor and its "claims" that it was spending most of its budget on poor communities were "questionable".
Writing in her weekly newsletter yesterday, Ms Zille said the ANC was more concerned about who will win at its national conference in Mangaung, than they were about serving the interests of the poor.
"The battle for Mangaung has even reached remote parts of the Northern Cape, where ANC faction fights have kept 16,000 children out of schools for four months."
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