Dear Gqeberha
Over the weekend, Minister Patricia De Lille’s GOOD Party communicated through its national policy officer, Mark Rountree, on critical issues related to the release of land for human settlements purposes. According to Rountree’s piece in Saturday’s Weekend Argus, Minister De Lille is supposedly driving the issue of land releases at Wingfield, Denel, and Youngfield. The DA in the Western Cape has consistently called on the Minister to release these parcels of land so that approximately 100,000 affordable homes may be built.
However, our calls as well as the official correspondence from the provincial Minister for Human Settlements have all gone without response from the national department. Instead, many months later, Minister De Lille is using her party as a mouthpiece for this very important information and thus bypasses correspondence with the Western Cape Government.
MPP Maseko says: “We are asking, is Minister De Lille the national Minister of Public Works for the whole country or only for the GOOD party?
It seems the ANC, her cosy national alliance partner, has taught her well on how to put her party before state. It appears Minister De Lille is using her government position for a political campaign, and is quite clearly only seeking to look after her GOOD party constituents in this way. This leads us to question whether the Minister has the Western Cape residents’ best interest at heart and if she truly cares about the people of this province.
The latest politicking would explain why Minister De Lille has blatantly ignored communication from the Western Cape Government when Provincial Human Settlements Minister, Tertuis Simmers, wrote to her on the release of land parcels so that housing opportunities could be developed.
We see Minister De Lille’s trend continues in communicating important information through the media first, bypassing the affected provincial government. She did exactly this when announcing the release of land in non-metro areas of the Western Cape back in May this year.
We urge the Minister to put aside her party politics and engage with the Western Cape on land. Our open letter to Minister De Lille asks for her response on the land parcels she announced for release in May, as well as the sites near the Cape Metro where as many as 100 000 affordable housing opportunities could be developed.”
Regards
Matlhodi Maseko, MPP
DA Western Cape Spokesperson on Human Settlements
