CLAIM : “The [South African] gap between the ‘haves’ & the ‘havenots’ is smallest in City of Cape Town. It has the highest level of equality in SA. #DAdelivers”
VERDICT : Correct
The DA based the claim on the 2010/2011 State of the World’s Cities report produced by UN-Habitat, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme.
The report, which used the Gini coefficient to compare inequality between cities, suggested that East London and Johannesburg were some of the most unequal cities in the world. While Cape Town was found to have high levels of inequality by world standards, it was found to be the least unequal of the South African cities examined for the report. Of the South African cities analysed, Cape Town had the lowest Gini coefficient at 0.67 while East London and Johannesburg had the highest Gini coefficients at 0.75.
The 2012/2013 State of the World’s Cities report found that Cape Town was a more broadly prosperous city than Johannesburg, the only other South African city examined.
The DA says the claim is based on a Western Cape government analysis of expenditure.The analysis states that ‘[i]n the 2012/13 financial year, the majority of tenders over R100 000 were awarded to BEE firms. In total, bids worth R1.6 billion went to BEE firms”. This amounts to 80% of the total.
This claim has been tweeted a number of times since November 2013 and is said to have been taken from Municipal IQ’s 2013 Productivity Index. Municipal IQ is an independent data service that monitors and assesses South Africa municipalities.
The claim is not strictly correct (though it is close) as the index shows that six of the ten top-performing local municipalities are run by the DA and one is run by a DA-Cope coalition.
The DA said that the claim was sourced from the Cape Town Story, a booklet published by the DA in March 2011. It claimed that “the post-2006 City government has built three times the number of houses its predecessor managed”.
Frouwien Bosman, a DA policy researcher, told Africa Check that the claim was based on comparing the average number of houses delivered under the ANC to the number delivered under the DA in 2008/09 and 2009/10.
In 2003/04, 2004/05 and 2005/06, the last three years the ANC ran the City of Cape Town, an average of 3,287 housing opportunities were provided, according to the city’s annual reports. Under the DA , 9,576 housing opportunities were delivered in the city in 2008/09 and 8,950 housing opportunities were delivered in 2009/10.
In 2010/11 and 2011/12, the number of housing opportunities delivered dropped to 7,472 and 7,141 respectively.
Bothma told Africa Check that the “youth wage subsidy programme” that the tweet refers to is the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism’s “Work and Skills Programme”. Bronwynne Jooste, a spokesperson for the Western Cape provincial minister of finance, economic development and tourism, Alan Winde, told Africa Check that R10-million was spent each year on the programme in 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12. Expenditure decreased to R8.9-million in 2012/13 and R13.4-million was spent on the programme in 2013/14.
Jooste couldn’t provide a document or an audit to support the figures. She said that the Work and Skills Programme’s expenditure was not accounted for separately in the department’s financial statements and was included under the broader category of “workforce development”.
The Premier’s Advancement of Youth Project started in 2012/13. Zak Mbhele, Zille’s spokesman in her capacity as Premier, told Africa Check that R23,1-million is spent every year on the Premier’s Advancement of Youth Project. This, he said, was based on paying 750 interns R2,400 per month for 12 months. An annual amount of R1,5-million is also allocated for administrative costs.
But Mbhele was unable to provide documentation to support the figure. “…[T]he remuneration expenditure on the [Premier’s Advancement of Youth Project] is part and parcel of personnel costs across all departments and is not reflected in a separate, collated document,” he explained via email.
If the figures provided by Jooste and Mbhele are correct, it would appear that a combined total of R32-million was spent in 2012/13 financial year and a further R36.5 million in 2013/14. These figures are close to, but not in line with, the R33.6-million per year that the DA’s claim refers to. It is unclear how the DA calculated that figure.
In 2008/09 – the last year the ANC governed the Western Cape – the Auditor-General reported that not a single provincial government department had received a clean audit.
In 2009/10 – the first year the Western Cape was run by the DA – the Auditor-General reported that seven departments had received clean audits.
Western Cape provincial government departments have occupied the top spots in the Annual Public Sector Reporting Awards since 2011. Both the 2011 and 2012 awards placed Western Cape departments in the top three positions. The Western Cape Department of Agriculture has scooped the top spot for two years running.
The DA referred Africa Check to an assessment produced by the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation in the Presidency which evaluated “the quality of management practices across a comprehensive range of management areas, from supply chain management to strategic planning”.
The assessment found that the Western Cape government scored highest out of all the provinces for strategic management, governance and accountability, human resources management and financial management.
The 2011 national census found that 99.1% of households in the Western Cape had access to piped water. Just behind the Western Cape was Gauteng province, where 98.2% of households were found to have had access to piped water.
The Western Cape had the highest percentage of households with access to flush or chemical toilets at 92%. It was followed by Gauteng, where 86.5% of households had access to flush or chemical toilets.
According to the census, 93.4% of Western Cape households used electricity for lighting, compared to 91.1% in the Free State and 87.4% in Gauteng.
However, the claim does not acknowledge the already high level of delivery that the DA inherited when it wrested control of the province from the ANC in 2009.
The claim is correct, according to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA). In 2012, 66.4% of Western Cape “consumer units” received free basic water. Nationally, only 37.1% of “consumer units” received free basic water.
The Western Cape provided free basic electricity to 43.6% of “consumer units” in 2012. This was the highest in the country. Nationally, only 24.9% of “consumer units” received free basic electricity.
While only 25.7% of “consumer units” in South Africa received free basic sewerage and sanitation, 67.7% of “consumer units” in the Western Cape received this free basic service, according to Stats SA.
Source: https://africacheck.org/reports/is-the-das-western-cape-story-a-good-story-to-tell-we-examine-the-claims/
