As Oscar Mabuyane was ushered in for his second term as premier of the Eastern Cape, he admitted that the high unemployment in the province and road infrastructure were a “ticking time bomb”.
He said investment in economic development would be an ideal solution for job creation and there were plans to address the province’s roads crisis.
“The focus must be on microeconomics. This is where you are dealing with factories and firms and how best lure them in to invest. It is difficult to bring investors to a rural province like ours,” he said.
On the bright side, Mabuyane said the province had done well with entities such as Coega and the ELIDZ, where about 14,000 people were working.
He revealed that the government was working on the eastern part of the province, where companies were interested in investing more than R2bn.
“We are focusing on this issue of economic development to make sure we are creating these boundless opportunities for young people. This will help young people to invest the skills they have acquired over time.
“We will probably take about 50 years to address the challenges we have with the roads infrastructure.
“Our roads are 90% gravel and 10% surfaced. We are discussing with the Development Bank of SA and the National Treasury to get money in advance to resolve the problem of roads. We are also doing some other roads as the government.” he said.
Mabuyane said the ANC was in decline in the province and the party needed to find a way to arrest that if it wanted to remain in power.
“Part of the weakness we have observed is that we were not at our utmost best [in the election].
“Elections are war as we want to contest for the power of this country because we want to lead its transformation.”
Opposition leader Vicky Knoetze of the DA said they understood that the re-election of Mabuyane had been done for the sake of continuity and to avoid disruption.
“From the previous term there is a whole list of promises that were not kept,” she said.
“You only get two chances and if he does not perform and keep those promises it will completely destroy his credibility.”
She said the ANC’s vote decline could be attributed to people losing hope and its track record of poor governance, with many people not having adequate basic resources such as water.
“One cannot speak about the Eastern Cape without speaking about unemployment. The province has the highest unemployment in the country.
“Recently we went on oversight and visited 32 towns.
“We found the collapse of infrastructure is imminent. We believe the collapse of critical infrastructure, which is not just roads but includes water, could be the next humanitarian crisis if we do not act very quickly.”
Knoetze said there needed to be a focus on local governance as 16 municipalities out of 39 were in financial distress.
“That is nearly 40% of municipalities, while half of our district municipalities are under administration and that severely affects our basic service delivery and has a real effect on the lives of people.”
EFF provincial leader Zilindile Vena said: “There is nothing that has changed here.
“The leadership of this government is the same leadership that was leading at the sixth administration. There is nothing and there is no plan.”
He said the party had learnt that Mercedes-Benz was going to retrench hundreds of workers.
“Those are 700 families in Eastern Cape and there is absolutely nothing that will come through. There are no ideas and what worries us is that at a legislative level we thought they would bring someone new,” he said.
Vena said the EFF in the province had strengthened, moving from five to eight seats.
“We are happy that the people of the province have given us more votes. We have grown and we take that responsibility,” he said.
DispatchLIVE
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.