I recently visited the Mbashe Senior Primary School in Dutywa. What I witness was yet another example of how children in the Eastern Cape are denied their basic right to quality education because the provincial Department of Education continue to force rural learners to go to school in dilapidated structures. This department has only spent [...]

No, no, no! Last year’s Eastern Cape expenditure patterns cannot be repeated. The danger lights are flashing once more. The first quarter provincial budgets and expenditure report released by National Treasury on 16 August is a siren call to the provincial government. Unless drastic action is taken to turn the situation around the Eastern Cape [...]

The Democratic Alliance notes and thanks the chairperson of the Health Portfolio Committee, Mxolisi Dimaza MPL, on agreeing to our request for the committee to make oversight visits on the various state morgues in the Eastern Cape. This follows the shock-exposé by the Daily Dispatch newspaper of the about the conditions at state morgues in [...]

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is shocked, but not surprised by the findings of the Daily Dispatch investigation of the state of the state morgues in the Eastern Cape and believes that the Department of Health (DOH) is in fact the rotting corpse itself. The Portfolio Committee on Health must as a matter of urgency conduct [...]

The lack of urgent repairs to flood damaged and potholed bridges and roads in the Eastern Cape is a crisis situation. I have today written to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Roads in the Legislature, Mrs. Nomalinde Komose to convene an urgent meeting next week to discuss this problem.

The signing ceremony today between mayors in the Eastern Cape and the MEC for Local Government, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, is a step in the right direction but this will only be a meaningful exercise if enforced. Lack of accountability lies at the heart of the problems of the Eastern Cape: until the axe falls with regularity [...]

The Democratic Alliance is dismayed with the commentary given by the Department of Health spokesperson, Sizwe Kupelo, to the release of the Humans Rights Watch report on maternal health care and mortality rates in South Africa which highlights the Eastern Cape as the worst of the worst. The maternal and infant mortality rates seen in [...]

Dutywa’s Govan Mbeki village consists of a field of 200 toilets without a single house being built. The site is a playground for vandals. The Mbashe Municipality claims the money was “used for something else” and the contractor is long-gone. Oom Gov would have been shocked. The frustration for a shack dweller to see the [...]

The official responsible for the use of municipal funds to paint a privately owned tavern in Peddie to celebrate Mandela Day must be criminally charged and made to repay the cost of this expenditure. I have written to the MEC for Local Government, Mlibo Qoboshiyane, and asked him to explain why this happened and what [...]

The draft Municipal Property Rates Amendment Bill will have dire effects for employment creation and future property development in the country and put more pressure on state housing should it be passed in parliament. The passing of this Bill in its current form would be suicide for the economic advancement of tourism and for property [...]