Khayelitsha hosts election debate

On Thursday evening NGOs Ndifuna Ukuwazi (NU) and Equal Education (EE) hosted an election debate at Lookout Hill in Khayelitsha as part of their 20:20 seminar series. Chaired by EE’s Yoliswa Dwane, the panel included ANC/Cosatu’s Tony Ehrenreich, DA’s Masizole Mnqasela, EFF’s Andile Mngxitama and Agang’s Sandile Eland.

The venue was filled to capacity with Khayelitsha residents including local activists, as well as plenty of blue DA t-shirt-wearing supporters and red beret-clad EFF members. A handful of Agang supporters were also in attendance, but ANC members were conspicuous in their absence. The debate was broken up into three sections: opening remarks, prepared questions (local issues) and questions from the floor.

ANC’s Tony Ehrenreich begun his speech by admitting, “No doubt there are incredible problems in Cosatu” not to mention the ruling party and then went on to spend his opening comments looking at how inequality manifests along racial lines.

“The conditions that black children experience are very different to white children... they must be able to realise opportunities with the same resources and prospects” said Ehrenreich He referred to the recent uprisings in De Doorns that Ehrenreich argued stems from the legacy of 1913 Land Act that saw black people evicted from their land. “We need to enquire about the theft of land, it needs to be dealt with. Land must be returned... We must undo these injustices”.

Earlier the DA’s Masizole Mnqasela said that “76% of the Western Cape provincial budget goes to poor communities including Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, Langa and other areas” and that the “story of the Western Cape” needs to be realised in the rest of the country.

He stressed that we needed to “deal with corruption” because it was “killing our economy” with “R25-30 billion lost to corruption every year”. He ended by saying that those who steal from the state must be fired and imprisoned.

EFF’s Andile Mngxitama kicked off his speech by saying “I am not from here. I have been sent to the Western Cape to come help liberate the province... This province was ruled by the ANC and the ANC did not change the conditions of black people. Now the ANC makes the laws and the DA imposes them,” said Mngxitama.

He went on to add that, “White people took our land, they made our grandparents slaves”, and later, “In Marikana the ANC killed our people when they demanded a living wage”, ending his speech with, “We are coming to Parliament; we are coming to Cape Town”.

Starting his speech with, “Viva citizen!”Agang Sandile Eland said, “ As Agang we have a solution for this country, a perfect solution... we have a leader with a history of struggle and black consciousness” referring of course to Dr Mamphela Ramphele.

He went on to lament the fact that “in the 20 years since the country was set free, people still live in informal settlements” adding that we needed more empowerment to, “set people free from the vicious circle of dependency syndrome”.

Eland spoke of the need to make drastic improvements to the state of education in South Africa. He took a swipe at the ANC for dropping the pass mark to 30%. He ended by saying, “This country needs a woman to lead it, men have failed”.

Chairperson Yoliswa Dwane explained that in the next part of the debate she wanted party representatives to address a series of local concerns, including sanitation services in informal settlements, gang violence, police transformation and youth unemployment.

Mnqasela told the audience, “I am a DA MP, I’m black like you. I am poor like you”. With regards to sanitation, he said, “99 % of people are able to drink clean water from the taps in the Western Cape” but this was not the case in ANC-run provinces such as Mpumulanga and the North West.

Mnqasela added that while the ANC only provided 14 000 toilets when they ruled in Western Cape, the DA had provided more than 40 000 toilets. When he made the bold statement, “Everybody in Cape Town has access to sanitation” he was heckled and boo-ed by the crowd.

Later in the audience question session, a representative from the Social Justice Coalition, Axolile Notywala said, “DA, you don’t know what you are talking about when it comes to sanitation... you are insulting people who are wearing blue t shirts who don’t have toilets.” With regards to the police, Mnqasela said, “The ANC must stop politicising the issue of crime; crime sees no colour... kids in Manenberg deserve free and safe education and we must make sure they are protected when they go to school.”

He wanted to see more officers, up to 250 000 police, on the streets every day and that the Commission of Inquiry into Policing in Khayelitsha set up by Premiere Zille was a positive step towards addressing the policing problem in the area.

Mngxitama (EFF) said, “We are going to end the townships – they are a place of hell for black people” and “the biggest corruption here is the white wealth.. that was stolen from us”. He then took a pot shot at Ramphele saying that as the chair of Goldfields she exploited black people who were paid poorly and then when they got sick they were “sent back to the Transkei to die”.

He added that the South African police “are trained to oppress black people and the Hangberg residents were evicted by force by the DA”.

Prompting applause and cheering, Mngxitama told the audience, “All our members of parliament are going to be forced to use public services. All our MPs are going to be forced to go to a public hospital when they are sick. They must take their children to a public school. This is the only way we can ensure the quality of public services”.

Eland (Agang) agreed that sanitation was a problem, “What the DA did wrong was to impose a solution. They didn’t go down to grassroots level and ask people what they wanted. With regards to gangsterism, Eland explained that Agang wanted to see a special policy that would see police specifically trained to deal with this issue. The Western Cape need a greater police presence as “kids were too afraid to go to school because of gangs" and that police “need to be trained well to do the job with love and not hate”.

The only party representative to address youth unemployment, Eland argues that government needed to get private business involved. “We need job training... companies must take young people and train them,” with government potentially paying companies to up-skill the youth. Ehrenreich spend much of his times addressing the race-inequality nexus in the Western Cape, blaming the DA for “neglecting and take short cuts when providing sanitation in townships”, for having a “lack of political will” and, “no regard for black people in the Western Cape still today”.

He added that the results of employment equity came out that day and 70% of managers in the Western Cape are white, “Huge salaries were going to the shadows of Table Mountain” and not to people living in other areas.

Ehrenreich ended by saying, “This election isn’t about colour... it’s about justice” which was a bit inconsistent with his earlier statements about race. The majority of the questions asked by the audience were in isiXhosa, with concerns about transport, crime, land reform, whistle blower protection, gender based violence and LGBTI rights.

Unfortunately it was difficult to hear the panel’s responses as the crowd started getting rowdy. DA supporters started singing while Agang’s Eland tried to answer question and eventually things got so noisy that the meeting disbanded. It was an unfortunate and disrespectful end to an otherwise informative debate.