Emma
Powell doesn’t get Richard
Poplak’s assessment of the DA in Daily Maverick. He did not comment on their governance in
Western Province and Cape Town per se, which the IRR’s
CEO Frans Cronje called a well-run bubble based on isolated examples, ironically,
one was the police, a national competence.
Poplak detailed, in his wordy style that’s not to everyone’s
taste, how the DA gutted their hitherto liberal values, most of it under Helen
Zille’s leadership, and their right-of-centre shift. Even erstwhile DA
supporter RW Johnson thinks so (see here).
But Powell’s response is about the metrics, as she understands
it, of good governance. She doesn’t
answer Poplak except saying he doesn’t understand internal DA politics. It’s the card hustler’s trick of
misdirection.
To be clear, the DA is better, if not far better, than the
ANC. But that’s only because the ANC
is negligent, incompetent and corrupt and set a low bar. The fact is any political party can and has done a
better job. In Cape Town after 2006 and other cities after the 2016 elections the
DA were in coalition with other parties.
They did not run those cities on their own but Powell claims all the
credit for the DA, at least in Cape Town after it absorbed the ID (no word
about troubled coalitions in other cities).
And like other politicians, she misunderstands and
overstates the importance of clean audits – the Western Cape and city
governments’ pride and joy.
The objective of an audit is to express an opinion on the
financial statements, not on
management's decision-making prerogatives, service delivery and other aspects. A clean audit, i.e. financially unqualified
and not deviating from performance objectives and legislation, is fairly easy
to obtain provided the organisation obeys management’s accounting policy, which
the auditor is not responsible for. That
there’s self-praise for doing what they ought to indicates the low standards and
misunderstanding of good governance. Ironically, more than once former premier
Helen Zille infamously wrote (including in her Daily Maverick column) the internationally based system of public audits
should be changed because it was a problem and inconvenient to her government.
A clean audit is not a guarantee of good governance, though. Financial management is only about seven out of
eighteen
governance indicators. The country including Western Cape and arguably City
of Cape Town continuously fails in the remainder which includes promotion of
administrative justice and ethics.
The other problem is Powell repeats the unverifiable claim
that unemployment (broad definition) in the province is lower than nationally solely because the DA is allegedly “creating”
“new” jobs. She doesn’t use those words,
but at various times Zille, former leader Mmusi
Maimane (see here
and here)
and MP Geordin Hill-Lewis have.
Note since last year they changed from quoting the official
unemployment rate to the broad definition because Limpopo’s and Western Cape’s official rates have been neck and neck
for a while, coincidentally after I brought it to their attention. For the third
quarter 2019 the former’s is 21.4% (expanded 41.9%) and latter’s 21.5%
(24.5%). The official statistic is used in all official announcements, a
practice the DA spurns to gain a modest, empty “win”, like beggars arguing over
who’s poorer. At 29.1% unemployment has
risen to its highest yet, the ninth highest in the world, pulling provinces
with it. No amount of DA (and ANC) posturing
can mitigate that unpalatable fact.
In February this year I emailed Hill-Lewis asking for the authority
for the job claims he made in a speech
to the National Assembly on February 13 wherein he extolled their virtues. Then
he said:
“Where the DA governs, jobs are
created. In the 10 years of DA government in the Western Cape, job growth has
been triple the next best province. That equals 640 000 [note at different
times they quoted different figures] new jobs, more than the entire population
of Mangaung, in new jobs. Unemployment where we govern is 14% points lower than
the rest of the country. Out of all the
jobs that were created in the whole country, 53.3% are from the one place where
the DA governs.”
He replied attaching a Western Cape government “brochure”,
which in fact was a Powerpoint presentation, where he said he got the figure
and its source. Its title is “Thanks to
you, we are better together”, subtitled “10 years of good governance together”
dated 31 January 2018, “Premier H Zille”.
However, to the jobs figure(s) in question, no authority was identified
although for others’ StatsSA were.
Inter alia he wrote, “The DA are not entrepreneurs, and only
entrepreneurs create new jobs. But we do claim credit for working hard to
create an environment in which it is easier and more favourable to create jobs”. This contradicted his “where the DA governs,
jobs are created” speech, though.
I contested their positive interpretation
of jobs figures particularly that StatsSA doesn’t use “created” or “new” in their
Quarterly Labourforce surveys. He accused me of “wilful misinterpretation” and that
I’m “out to make a point”, which I was, i.e. for the facts. He ended his
side of the communication.
Incidentally, to my question about the increase of public
sector workers in the Western Cape from 2009 to 2019, he said they have
statistics, which he didn’t provide, but the increase was not as fast as
nationally. He didn’t have figures for
national government and state-owned entities, though, so how could he compare?
Public sector workers are not economically productive, and we
should not take the DA’s unverified word that growth in that sector in the Western
Cape is not proportionally as significant
as the rest of the ANC-run country. Hill-Lewis’
replies indicated their misunderstanding and confusion about macro-economics,
which is a concern for a party that claims they do it better. (He’s now the
DA’s finance spokesman.)
Powell, as Hill-Lewis (Maimane, Zille and Western Cape
government didn’t reply to my same
questions) did, demonstrates DA members are still repeating, and in Parliament
where it’s prohibited, unverified information using another DA politician – Zille
– as an authority, confirming each other’s biases. I call this the “Oracle Helen” factor, i.e.
if the Oracle says so, it must be true.
While Hill-Lewis, under pressure, was right to retract/modify
his earlier statement (in Parliament) and tell me they don’t create jobs but
only enable the environment, that wasn’t what he, Maimane, Zille’s presentation
and now Powell meant or implied. What
does Powell’s statement “Employment grew by 24.8%, and the Western Cape
obtained the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at 14% [sic]” mean if not what
she intends it to mean?
She writes further: “While national government continued to
systematically chase away foreign direct investment, with direct consequences
for the country’s poorest citizens, during Zille’s tenure more than
R100-billion was invested into the Western Cape as a result of foreign direct investment,
creating more than 19,000 jobs.” Only 19
000 – where are the 640 000 or 487 000 Hill-Lewis and Maimane respectively
claimed?
And anyway, Gauteng is still the country’s economic engine.
South Africa is a unitary state. Economic policy is created by national
government. While regions and cities can
and do promote investment, typically its success is tied to investors’
perceptions and the facts of the national macro-economic and business environment. While the Western Cape, like other provinces,
has comparative advantages, its growth and other economic indices are linked to
the country’s which has been in decline since 2011. The Western Cape Treasury’s annual report
confirms the province’s economic position.
So any statements to the contrary are suspect.
Powell and her colleagues are either deliberately making
false statements about the DA-run province’s alleged remarkable economic
prospects vis-à-vis the country as a whole, or like the ANC,
they’re ignorant about macro-economics.
And they’ve learnt nothing from Zille’s and Maimane’s
mistakes and the recent fallout. That’s
another thing we can take from Poplak.
Powell’s response proves it.
I sent the above to Daily Maverick's managing editor Janet Heard as a reply to Powell. They did not publish, as they have not any of the numerous others I've sent (see here and here for recent ones). They claim they invite letters, contributions and right of replies but don't. Recently Heard has not even acknowledged my emails as she has before. I gather I'm persona non grata.
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