Premier Alan Winde officially marks halfway point of his term in office

Media release by Premier Alan Winde on the mid-term of his administration

Yesterday, 22 November, officially marked the halfway point of the Premier of the Western Cape, Alan Winde’s term of office. As part of his review of progress made to date, the Western Cape Government has published a Midterm 2021 Update, which will become a living document, updated regularly.

Premier Winde reflected: “When I started my term as the Premier back in May 2019, I committed to delivering a safer, more prosperous province. We have made good progress in many areas, but the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly thrown our administration a curveball. During this unprecedented time,  we will have to be agile and innovative to keep the Western Cape moving forward, and not be afraid to make bold decisions in the best interests of our people. That is why we are looking forward, ensuring that jobs, safety and dignity remain our primary focus.”

The Western Cape has:

• The lowest unemployment rate in the country, although it remains too high and that is why job creation remains our top priority.

• An extensive provincial safety plan, with 1000 additional boots on the ground by the end of the year.
• A well-run public healthcare system, that has provided excellent care to residents during this difficult time.
• A comprehensive, corruption-free COVID-19 response, that has been innovative and evidence-based.
• A quality public education system, with improved retention rates and the highest percentage of bachelor passes.
• The best clean governance record in the country, both provincially and at the local government level.

Premier Winded said: “It is important that we turn this time of crisis into a time of opportunity. To do so, we must apply the lessons learnt during the pandemic to all other focus areas, so that we deliver on our priorities over the next two and a half years. For me, it must be about jobs, jobs, jobs! Too many people have lost their livelihoods over the last two years, and if we are to deliver the safety and dignity our people deserve, we must empower our people with employment, especially our younger people.”

The Mid-Term update, available as a digital copy, sets out a number of achievements by the Western Cape Government over the last two years. Here are some noteworthy highlights (full details can be viewed in the booklet).

Jobs & Economy

• In 2019/2020, R621 million in economic savings were assessed due to the interventions of the Western Cape’s Red Tape Reduction Unit which aims to promote the ease of doing business.
• In 2020/21, 17 investment projects worth R4.37 billion were secured by Wesgro’s Investment Promotion Unit, creating 1830 jobs. So far in 2021/22, investments worth R5.7 billion were realised by the team, which will help create 4203 job opportunities.
• Exports have increased from R127.30 billion to R136.72 billion in 2020, representing a 7.4% annual increase in the province.
• We launched the first public-private partnership BPO Academy of Excellence in partnership with the College of Cape Town, the National Skills Fund, the City of Cape Town and the BPO Industry. In total, 1 166 full-time jobs were created in the Business Process Operating (BPO) sector through our Work and Skills programme in the last financial year.
• Our Department of Transport and Public Works has created over 13 100 work opportunities across the roads and public works portfolios since 2019.
• The Department of Human Settlements created a total of 1 993 job opportunities while providing training to 212 young people since 2019.
• Our COVID-19 Business Relief Fund assisted 249 businesses negatively impacted by the pandemic. Over R38 million was provided through this fund, supporting 2 111 jobs.
• We are the only provincial government to maintain our outstanding track record of paying suppliers on time.

Good governance and transparency:

• Ratings Afrika has found the best performing municipalities in South Africa are in the Western Cape. The same report found that the top-performing Metro Municipality in the country was the City of Cape Town, in the Western Cape.
• We launched the first annual Procurement Disclosure Report, a first in the country, for full transparency on COVID-19 procurement by WCG Departments and entities.
• In the 2019/20 financial year, 70% of departments and entities received clean audits, compared to the next best province, Gauteng, with 30% clean audits and the worst-performing province, the North West, with 4% clean audits. We incurred no unauthorised expenditure, compared to the next best province, Limpopo, with R1.13 million in unauthorised expenditure, and the worst-performing province, the Eastern Cape, with R1.58 billion in unauthorised expenditure.

Transport and Infrastructure

• The Western Cape is South Africa’s most successful province in terms of building plans approved, both in terms of square metres, and in terms of value.
• We have unlocked R2.1 billion in provincial funding for the Saldanha Bay Industrial Development Zone, since 2014/15, helping to drive economic growth.
• Our Integrated Transport Hub which is linked to our camera system (including in-vehicle cameras) and handheld devices given to officers operates 24/7 and provides officers with real-time verified alerts and information.
• The GO GEORGE service currently conveys over 315 000 passenger trips per month, with approximately 3.78 million passengers per annum. Since 2019, the vehicle operating company for GO GEORGE, George Link (Pty) Ltd, has permanently employed 356 staff, of which 258 are bus drivers.
• To boost economic growth and provide better services, we have spent R19.2 billion on infrastructure since the 2019/20 financial year. We have also invested over R6 billion in road infrastructure since 2019. Half on maintaining our existing network, and half on construction.
• The Blue Dot taxi pilot programme is also a first for South Africa, incentivising better taxi services by participating drivers. This programme saw 8 new companies established, with over 519 operators and 924 drivers trained. In total, 949 vehicles were branded and fitted with a tracker, and 79 vehicles and their owners are now eligible to earn Blue Dot incentive payments. This programme electronically monitored over 11 million km of minibus taxi operations from 1 June 2021 to the end of September 2021.

Electricity and green energy alternatives

• It is now legal in 24 municipalities to produce Solar PV energy, with 19 of these municipalities allowing you to be compensated for feeding this back into the grid.
• A successful Request for Information for the Municipal Energy Resilience (MER) initiative has been issued, which has solicited information from more than 100 potential energy generation projects. A MER fund to assist municipalities with development plans for financially sustainable renewable energy projects has also been launched.
• The amount of Solar PV installed in the province has increased from 18MW in 2015/16 to 167 MW in 2019/20.
• There has been a total investment of R142 million in the Atlantis Special Economic Zone for Green Technology since 2019, which attracts investment into the Green Economy.

Healthcare

• To date, over 2 million medicine parcels have been delivered directly to people’s homes to protect vulnerable people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• We’re the first to have our public hospital and primary healthcare digitised, including 265 primary healthcare centres, 181 mobile posts, 51 acute and specialised hospitals, 28 intermediate care facilities, 49 EMS stations, 17 FPS laboratories and 2 oral health centres.
• We’re the first province to have a unique patient number across all our patients attending all our public health facilities.
• To be transparent on COVID-19 data, we launched the COVID-19 public-facing dashboard. This site received over 3 million views from 167 countries. The dashboard won the Africa Tech Award for Best use of Technology in the Public Sector 2020.
• We built the biggest COVID-19 field hospital in Africa in just 6 weeks, and we opened ‘Hospitals of Hope’ at Brackengate and in Mitchells Plain.
• Groote Schuur Hospital and Tygerberg Hospital were the first to publish prospective observational research on the use of high-flow nasal oxygen in the treatment of severe COVID-19 pneumonia. At the time, this was the largest prospective observational study published in a peer-review journal.
• We were the first to implement COVID-19 vaccinations of undocumented people as part of our outreach to vulnerable communities.
• To ensure rural access to healthcare, our HealthNet patient transport system operates at 230 pick-up points across the province. Every year over 105 000 patients are transported to healthcare facilities, through this R90 million service which is unique to our province. During the global pandemic, we have expanded our pick-up points to areas closer to our communities to accommodate curfew and lockdown regulations.

Social welfare

• An additional 30 new GBV social workers have been deployed to hotspot areas to assist women in need in the evenings and on the weekends.
• 1 963 victims of crime and violence accessed safe accommodation that is supported by the Western Cape.
• Over 60 000 children at Early Childhood Development (ECD) facilities are subsidised from our funding.

• To support the safe re-opening of the ECD sector, we provided PPE to 2 243 ECD facilitators and 20 833 children. This enabled over 3194 ECDs to open by 2021. Over R10 million was prioritised for this support.
• We convened our first-ever ECD Forum, marking the beginning of the process to map out a vision for the future of the sector, bringing together key stakeholders, local ECD Forums, and key corporate funders and supporters of the sector.
• Through the Community Economic Recovery Programme, 122 spaza shops were supported in hotspot areas. 251 kitchens redeemed 3 203 vouchers. A dedicated Gender-Based Violence Implementation Plan has been adopted. The number of Gender-Based Violence Shelters supported by the WCG increased from 19 to 25 as of 2021.
• We were the only province that continued to pay subsidies to funded ECDs during Lockdown, even after they were ordered to close. While ECDs remained closed, many used their subsidies to continue providing meals to the children which provided critical humanitarian support.

Schooling

• We were also the only province to feed learners during the lockdown, delivering 1.2 million meals between 6 April and 12 May 2020. The North Gauteng High Court ruled that the other provinces had failed in their statutory duty to ensure that meals were provided during this period.
• Learner retention between Grade 10 and Grade 12 has steadily increased since 2009. The Western Cape continues to retain more learners than any other province.
• In the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019, we achieved the highest scores in the country for both Mathematics and Science.

Safety

• Amid severe policing resources nationally and provincially, we are the only province to have established its own Provincial Safety Plan. To date, we have trained and deployed over 800 law enforcement officers, through the Safety Plan, acting as force multipliers for SAPS in our most crime affected areas.
• The Office of the Western Cape Police Ombudsman, which is the only office of its kind in the country, has investigated 3344 cases to date. In terms of the Western Cape’s Community Safety Act, this office is responsible for investigating police inefficiencies by the SAPS, ensuring better service delivery.
• 1 005 Youth Safety Ambassadors have been placed for violence prevention interventions at schools, the SAPS, the Department of Health, municipalities, and Community Based Organisations.
• 3 K9 units have been established and supported by the WCG. Between 2019 and 2021, over R24 million has been transferred to respective municipalities for this.
• We launched, through our Department of Transport and Public Works, a specialised interception unit and highway patrol to respond to high-risk events. A total of 69 vehicles in the existing fleet have been repurposed for this.
• We are the only province that tracks alcohol-related harms at emergency centres across the province. The number of emergency centres monitored through this programme has increased from 4 sites to 21. This data provides critical insights that will enable interventions to reduce alcohol-related harms and violence in our communities.

Support to farms and rural communities

• We’re the leading province for Conservation Agriculture, with 51% of all crop-livestock farmers in the Western Cape having fully adopted this way of farming at a total of 804 866 hectares. The number of farmers adopting Conservation Agriculture has grown by 15% from 2015 to 2021.
• The number of people employed in primary agriculture increased from 183 875 in the second quarter of 2019 to 187 951 during the same period in 2021.
• Over the last five years, agricultural exports have grown by an annual average growth rate of 4.3% from R53.2 billion to R72.4 billion in nominal terms.
• From 2019 to date, 12 916 agri-workers were supported through development projects.
• We implemented the Wine Tourism Worker Stipend project valued at R12 million to support and maintain 1362 workers at 254 businesses in the wine tourism industry
• The Rural Safety Desk has so far recorded 40 incidents, which receive SAPS case numbers, and are followed up through the Department of Community Safety Court Watching Brief Unit.
• We established a Rural Safety Monitoring Dashboard, as part of the Rural Safety Desk. This is the first of its kind in the South African agricultural sector.
• Between 2019/20 to 2020/21, we’ve managed to leverage approximately R60 million for farmers operating on land reform farms through private sector support.

Housing and land reform

• Our housing database app, a first for South Africa, has been downloaded 9154 times, with 423 new housing demand cases registered, 365 personal detail updates received and an average of 73.75% of cases opened per month from June- September 2021.
• We supported 110 Land Reform projects during 2019/21 to the value of R130 million.  For the year 2021/22, 71 projects have been identified, with an estimated support of R104 million.
• We have provided 29 083 housing opportunities for people in the Western Cape since 2019.
• We plan to deliver a total of 21 363 Social Housing units through various projects planned across various regions over the next 10 years. These will be implemented in partnership with municipalities and the Social Housing Regulatory Authority.
• We have provided 3048 housing opportunities through the Finance Linked Individual Subsidy Programme (FLISP). The FLISP programme assists first time home buyers with a household income between R3 510 – R22 000.
• We assessed the demand for the rent-to-own programme, finding that 286 households had completed Income and Expenditure Surveys, which were screened by financial institutions.

Culture, sports and heritage

• In partnership with the University of the Western Cape and Heal the Hood, we started a process to develop a Kaaps-English Bilingual Dictionary. This initiative will develop linguistic and literacy resources for Kaaps speakers in South Africa, with specialised training and workshops for the development of the Kaaps-English terminology to be rolled out.
• Since 2019, 11 libraries for the blind have opened, bringing the total to 28 in the Western Cape. Over 228 rural libraries in 24 municipalities are connected to high-speed internet, ensuring improved access for rural communities.
• 702 artists were funded through our relief funding as a response to the major impact of lockdown on the sector.
• We trained 223 cultural practitioners responsible for customary male initiations in COVID-19 infection prevention and control measures to manage the spread of the virus when the initiation schools were permitted to reopen under national regulations.

• For this financial year, we have allocated funding for a new Multipurpose Centre in Prince Albert, dual netball and tennis courts in Swellendam and two new combi courts in Swartland. This follows funding provided to Swartland Municipality for the upgrading of sports facilities in Darling, Kalbaskraal and Malmesbury in the 2019/20 financial year.
• Currently, 180 clubs have been supported through our Club Development Programme which includes clubs from rural and farming communities.
• As part of the successful bid for the hosting of the Netball World Cup in 2023,  we have committed to upgrading and building facilities in the province. R13.5 million has been earmarked over 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23 financial years.
• We translated the Netball Rulebook into isiXhosa as a part of our Netball Legacy Project. We are currently completing the translation of the Boxing Rule Book, which will be completed this year.

Premier Winde concluded: “Throughout this challenging time, one thing has underpinned everything we do. Our unquestionable commitment to you. Wherever you may live, no matter what you earn. We wake up every day with one goal in mind – to deliver to you, for you, so that you can have the opportunities, the safety and the well-being you need to have a prosperous and dignified life. On behalf of the Provincial Cabinet, our Heads of Department and all employees who work across our government, I thank you, our residents, for all you do in our communities to help make the Western Cape a better place.”

To view the entire midterm review, please visit: http://www.westerncape.gov.za/assets/departments/premier/wcg_mid-term_review_booklet_r1.pdf