Durban — Despite nagging policy differences with the ANC, its main coalition partner in the Government of National Unity (GNU), the DA said it was not regretting its decision to be part of the arrangement.
Reflecting on 100 days since the agreement, DA leader John Steenhuisen said his party chose to put South Africa first rather than handing it over to the EFF and uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), with all the economic and social destruction that this could bring, saying its decision was because it wanted to turn the country around.
By joining the GNU, the DA has generated enormous optimism for a better future, he said and injected new confidence in the country’s economic prospects.
“In the 100 days since the election, the DA has begun to turn that optimism into action. Our first decision was to prioritise economic growth and job creation above all else.
“The single most important outcomes for the GNU are higher levels of growth and lower unemployment. Those are the KPIs that the DA is focused on,” said Steenhuisen.
The agriculture minister said consequently, the DA was viewing every department in which it is represented as an opportunity to drive growth and jobs, and to develop policy priorities accordingly.
He said that can be seen in some of the work already done by the party’s ministers and deputy ministers which he said, was promoting a comprehensive spending review to identify government programmes that don’t deliver value for the people of South Africa, with a view to eliminating them.
The DA was aiming at reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio to under 70% in the next five years to avoid a fiscal crisis, adding that faster growth was necessary. This would be achieved by: “Working with the Treasury and the Presidency to include in Operation Vulindlela the concession of ports, the concession of the rail management system, creating open access to rail, establishing a secondary market for broadband, reforming the local government financial model and reforming the financing of local government infrastructure.
In addition, by developing the “Home Affairs@home” vision for a digitally transformed department that delivers world-class services without requiring clients to visit Home Affairs offices, introducing a Trusted Tour Operator Scheme (TTOS) to unlock tourism from China and India as well as refined and finalised regulations for Remote Work Visa and a new PointsBased Work Visa that will attract skills into the economy to drive growth and create tens of thousands of new jobs,” said the DA leader.
The DA’s comments came amid growing policy differences, which forced Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube to boycott the signing of the Bela Bill (Basic Education Law Amendment Bill) into law.
The DA was opposed to this and had threatened to take President Cyril Ramaphosa to court over it.
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