Madam Deputy Speaker, during his response to the Budget debate yesterday, the President made two key points: The first was that the DA was incorrect to claim that race-based appointments were being employed in the Western Cape, and the second, that race-based appointments would be "eminently unacceptable".
As he conspicuously failed to disprove that race-based appointments are a reality in the province, he now needs to strongly convey to the provincial authorities that these practices are in fact unacceptable.
The DA initially raised concerns about three posts, two at Tygerberg and one at Valkenberg. In his response the President dealt specifically with only one of these claims, relating to a principal specialist's post at Tygerberg. By the President's own admission, the post at this hospital has still not been filled, despite the availability of a suitably qualified candidate.
If we accept the reality of race-based appointments at public hospitals in the Western Cape, and we accept that the President was speaking with conviction yesterday when he claimed that such appointments would be "an eminently unacceptable outcome of our policies to build a nonracial society", then it is clearly incumbent on the President to stop the practices employed by the Western Cape government. Thank you, Madam Speaker.