Zuma vs Zille

Last week we had Zuma’s State of the Nation Address. This week we heard Helen Zille on the State of the Western Province. Both cited poverty as a key cause for concern.

Their approach to this issue is where the debate begins and ends.

Zuma began at the top, with promises worth billions of rand to improve production, transport, housing and such-like. As promises, they far exceeded his usual bland utterances to ‘do something’ and many people praised him for finding the courage to break from this tired pattern at last.

Zille, on the other hand, started as always at grass-roots – where poverty roosts. Her plan for the Western Cape shows an in-depth understanding of the plight endured by those living on the bread-line and she placed her goals within their reach.

Both Zuma and Zille embraced an eventual ideal that rests in the heart of South Africa’s grief and needs desperately to be realised. The difference is that Zille’s plans are practicable and Zuma’s are not. The Western Cape has dragged itself from ANC mismanagement to becoming the best-run province in the country through dogged service delivery – which the successful DA is first to admit is still far from perfect.

Yet the Western Cape has made small inroads that amount to giant steps. Despite an influx from other provinces by those rightfully seeking a better life, unemployment figures continue to fall. Imagine how much greater this drop might be, if the Western Cape did not have to bear the burden of her less fortunate neighbours?

Spurred by ANC agitators, these infiltrators complain that they do not get what they demand from the DA – despite promises honoured and better service delivery than they would enjoy anywhere else in the country.

Other provinces have succumbed, not only to lack of service delivery, but to corruption on a scale that has left Limpopo and the Free State (as well as aspects of Gauteng and the Eastern Cape) subject to supervision by National Government.

The billions of rand required to implement Jacob Zuma’s plans from the top down are already missing, if not misappropriated or squandered – to the point of having to borrow money from abroad. How on earth does he propose to fund his grandiose ideas?