A decade ago, the Western Cape was on the same road to ruin as the rest of South Africa’s provinces. Corruption ran rampant. The ANC’s premier, Ebrahim Rasool – the same man currently heading the party’s election campaign in the province – was handing brown envelopes stuffed with cash to journalists in return for favourable coverage.
Today, the Western Cape vastly outperforms any other province in the country. Compared to zero clean audits in 2009/2010, Western Cape government departments in 2018/19 obtained 83% clean audits, leaving other provinces in the dust. As DA governments took over ever more municipalities and in close cooperation with the provincial government, we also increased the number of municipalities with clean audits from one to 21 out of 30.
This growth is under-girded by the best education and healthcare systems in South Africa. We have increased the matric pass rate to 81.5% in 2018 from 75.7% in 2009, including vast improvements in the rates of maths and science passes. The highest retention rate in the country means that more learners also make it to matric in the Western Cape than anywhere else.