'Everything the ANC says shows it has no clue how jobs are created’ - Zille weighs in on policy conference

01 August 2022 - 09:00
By Unathi Nkanjeni
DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille says some optimists argue the 2024 election will be the start of SA’s renewal and economic revival. File image.
Image: Freddy Mavunda DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille says some optimists argue the 2024 election will be the start of SA’s renewal and economic revival. File image.

“Everything the ANC says shows they have no clue how jobs are created or how an economy grows.”

This is according to DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille, who weighed in on the ANC’s sixth policy conference that took place at the weekend at Nasrec, south of Johannesburg.

In a lengthy social media post, Zille predicted the ruling party would focus more on the “step-aside” rule, a 2017 resolution that calls for party members facing criminal charges to step aside or face immediate suspension.

“SA’s greatest problem by far is unemployment, and economic decline. But everything the ANC says — most recently in a television interview with Sboniso Duma, its newly elected KwaZulu-Natal chair — shows they have no clue how jobs are created or how an economy grows,” she said.

“Resorting to tired old Marxist claptrap, Duma argued ‘economic liberation’ will come only when ‘the people’ (read the ANC) own the ‘means of production’.

“We laughed when the president spoke about creating a second Eskom to solve the electricity crisis. Listening to Duma, I concluded the ANC wants to create myriad Eskoms to run every economic enterprise.”

As the ANC’s policy conference dominates the headlines, it seems the primary focus will be on the “step-aside” rule, an...

Posted by Helen Zille on Saturday, July 30, 2022

According to Zille, should the ANC continue reverting to race to hide its own failures, “we will soon look back on the ‘good old days’ when unemployment was ‘only 40%’.”

Zille said there are optimists who look forward to 2024, when the ANC will likely fall under 50% of the vote in a national election, and coalition politics will become a standard feature of the country’s national and provincial landscape.

“The 2024 election will be the start of SA’s renewal and economic revival, the optimists argue. One can live in hope and I always do.

“However, when far-reaching change is on the cards it makes sense to look at both the opportunities and threats," she said, before going into a discussion on independent candidates and possible challenges this poses.

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