De Lille: I feel vindicated
Patricia de Lille looks for for second term as Cape Town mayor - the first person to do so since the formation of the unicity in 2000.
|||Cape Town - “I feel vindicated.”
Those were words of Patricia de Lille as she looked set to sail into her second term as Cape Town mayor on Friday - the first person to do so since the formation of the unicity in 2000.
In a hat-trick for the DA, the party was on its way to a comfortable victory in the metro to extend its decade-long rule in the city for another five years.
On Friday morning, with 86% of the votes counted in the Cape metro, the DA were leading with 67.3%.
“I feel vindicated that South Africans want to vote for a government that can deliver clean governance, that can spend money where it is supposed to be spent, that provides quality services to all the people, and so we have been vindicated in that the DA does do that for all the people of the City of Cape Town,” De Lille said at the IEC’s provincial elections centre at Century City on Thursday night.
She added there would be no 100-day plan for her new term in office - rather her administration would continue with plans already in place.
“I am very humbled by the confidence and trust that the people of Cape Town have given again. I had asked them to lend me their vote for another five years, and they have responded to that.”
A key focus area for her new five-year term would be the roll-out of services to backyarders while they awaited housing opportunities.
De Lille said the DA would also continue with its “redress programme” of upgrading concrete roads and pavements as well as installing ceilings and waterproofing houses built between 1994 and 2005. “That is part of the 67 percent that we spend on poor people already, and we will continue with that.”
She had harsh words for her detractors who have accused her of putting the city up for sale to the highest bidders.
“I really don’t care because the people have spoken. I don’t care what those people who are anti-transformation are saying. People have vindicated us and the people are happy with what we are doing. So they can continue to scream and shout until they are blue in the face, we have consulted.”
De Lille said the DA had campaigned on clean governance and its track record of controlling nine of the country’s best-run municipalities, and it had paid off.
Her administration, De Lille said, was being unfairly criticised for not providing sufficient services to all, because at the rate at which Cape Town was growing, it was impossible to do so.
“Any city anywhere in the world that experiences the kind of growth that we do, it is humanly impossible when a person arrives in Cape Town today to give them quality services, because there is a waiting list you have to work according to.”
De Lille accused the ANC of deliberately withholding information about the council’s plans for those wards under ANC control.
“They want the people to believe that the DA does not care about black people. Now that we are able to go past the ANC and go directly to people, you will see the kind of improvement that it is going to have,” she said.
De Lille came close to scoring a second victory on Thursday night, as the DA clung to hopes of wresting control of her home town of Beaufort West from the ANC.
Each party won six seats, with the Karoo Gemeenskap Party being the kingmaker with a single seat.
“When I drove through Beaufort West, just the filth and the dirt and the potholes... just the whole town. I actually drove past the municipality buildings and they were busy painting it, and I stopped and said to the contractors: you are painting it because we are coming, thank you for cleaning it. Once they have declared the results we will start talking to parties to form coalitions where there is a need to form a coalition.”
lindsay.dentlinger@inl.co.za
Cape Argus