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t is heartbreaking that the Free State could lay claim to being the worst-run region in the whole of South Africa.
John Steenhuisen, leader of the DA, said this during the launch of the DA’s manifest in Thaba Nchu on Friday and put forward that a new government to rescue the Free State was within reach as the ANC support crashed to 50%.
“The election on 29 May will be a real crossroads election,” he said to BloemNews at the event.
“If people in the Free State wait another five years before they vote out the ANC, there will be nothing left.”
He said the Mangaung Metro was one of the worst-run metros in the country.
“There is no reason for Mangaung to be so bad off. It is a wonderful place with wonderful people. The only problem is that the government in the metro does not care about its people.”
Steenhuisen asked: If a metro with all its resources can not provide a good life to its residents, how are those in the rural areas supposed to survive?
He said the Free State, with a relatively small population of just under three million people, had all the resources it needed to provide a dignified life for all of its residents.
“The Free State lacks the most important ingredient of all – a government that works for the people.
“After all, in a region blessed with such enormous agricultural, mining and manufacturing potential, it takes a truly catastrophic government to still run it into the ground. But that is exactly what a succession of ANC governments have done,” he said.
He compared the unemployment rate of 44 out of 100 people who can not find a job, and 7 out of 10 young people who are unemployed to the situation in the Western Cape – where 300 000 new jobs were created in the last five years.
“Out of a population of just under three million, there are only 231 000 registered taxpayers left. Over 92% of the Free State’s residents are too poor to even be registered with SARS.”
Steenhuisen said the unemployment and cost-of-living crisis in the Free State, which has made it impossible for many families to even put food on the table in this fertile province, is the direct result of decades of ANC corruption and misrule.
He urged residents to take part in the coming national and provincial election to take action against the ruling government.
“Your vote is your weapon against all that is wrong in the province. Use your vote. This election is like a referendum that will show where the province is going in the next local municipal elections.”
Steenhuisen said it was important that residents realise that all politics is local.
“Changes on national and provincial level can have a direct influence in local municipalities if strong leaders are chosen to guide and lead them.”
He said over the past week, the latest independent poll from the Social Research Foundation confirmed that the ANC had crashed to only 37% support nationally.
In the same poll, the DA was at 25% and growing, with the Multi-Party Charter on its way to becoming the biggest organised political bloc in the country.
Roy Jankielsohn, the DA Free State premier candidate, said at the event in Thaba Nchu that the election on 29 of May would be the biggest landmark in South African political history since the first inclusive democratic election in 1994.
“This time, we are voting to rescue our province and country from the grip of economic decline, crime and corruption.”
