Cape Town - Premier Alan Winde’s administration marked its halfway point at the end of 2021 and the challenges of managing and negotiating the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns have continued to colour its performance.
In the first of our reviews of the past year, we take a look at three members of the provincial executive committee, including Winde himself, and rate their performance.
The criteria used to score each is based on their ability, visibility and service delivery.
Premier Alan Winde:
Winde spent the first half of the year campaigning for the Western Cape government to procure its own vaccines despite assurances that there was no need. By the end of the year, however, this campaign appeared to have lost its urgency. The year ended with numbers of vaccinated people in the province still less than 50%.
In the second half of the year, Winde seemed overshadowed by then DA mayoral candidate for Cape Town and now mayor, Geordin Hill-Lewis.
It is time Winde reclaimed the spotlight. Perhaps he might do this by campaigning for provincial herd immunity cover as hard as he did for a differentiated approach to Covid-19 restrictions.
5/10
Human Settlements MEC Tertuis Simmers:
In the past year Simmers had a spat with Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille, whom he accused of delaying the handover of six parcels of land to his department to enable the planning of housing developments.
He also spent time complaining about land invasions. When he wasn’t complaining he and his department handed out just over 15 000 title deeds.
The trouble is, there are still nearly 600 000 applicants on the Housing Demand Database across the province. Simmers needs to find alternative ways, including co-operation, in order to make a real dent in the numbers of those waiting for homes.
4/10
Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo:
Probably the most visible member of the provincial executive in 2021, Mbombo was kept busy dealing with the pandemic itself and a barrage of misinformation and fake news regarding vaccines.
This year she needs to make more effort in ensuring that health service delivery on the ground in rural parts of the province and the poor sections of the metro is as clean as the audits the department received.
6/10
Part 2 will be featured in Wednesday’s edition of the Cape Argus newspaper, and later on the Cape Argus website.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za