THE REAL STATE OF THE PROVINCE ADDRESS – WESTERN CAPE – BY PREMIER
ALAN WINDE
24 FEBRUARY 2026
ISIVIVANA CENTRE, KHAYELITSHA
Honourable General Secretary of the Equal Education
Honourable Deputy General Secretary
Honourable Head of Province
Honourable Organisers and Community Leaders
Honourable Leaders of Fellow Social Justice Organisations
Honourable Parents and community members
Members of the Post School Youth Tertiary Society and Facilitator Bodies
Honourable Members of the Western Cape Leadership Committees
Learners of the Western Cape
The special constituency of Khayelitsha branches!
Good evening. Molweni. Goeie naand.
I am humbled to deliver the 2026 State of the Province Address to the people of our remarkable province.
For the past six years, each time I delivered this annual address, I have boasted and bragged about my DA-led government. Regardless of the challenges we encountered, such as budget cuts, a water crisis, or a global pandemic, I consistently assigned blame to others.
During these challenging times, I have taken the easy route and played political games instead of trying to actually solve our wicked problems. I have run away from the harsh realities of Khayelitsha, Langa, Delft, Mfuleni, Kraaifontein and other areas. I have ignored you during my State of the Province Address (SOPA), just as I continue to ignore you in my governance. But today is different. Today, I am not going to lie to you about the racism of my party and the way we govern in this province. Today, I will reveal the truth about why my province remains a stronghold of inequality and injustice.
I will start off by telling you about the education system in the province. Our schools are microcosms of our society, and the investment we make here indicates the outcome we want for our future.
In this great province of the Western Cape, we spend more money on teachers in quintile 5 fee-charging schools than we do in no-fee schools. Last year, we also cut 2407 teachers from our payroll. The worst affected schools were schools in black and brown communities, where overcrowding is already a problem and where quality teaching and learning is not our priority
Last year, we lost a court battle against Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre. The court found that our Admissions Policy unfairly discriminates against late applicants on the basis of race, poverty level, place of birth, and social origin. We were ordered to fix our admissions policy.
We did not fix our admissions policy. Instead, let me explain what actions we are taking to address the admissions crisis. We are still leaving black learners out in the cold without school places. We are not placing them in schools. When parents come to us for help, we tell them to go to the district office, even though we know they have already been there.
If you listen to any of MEC Maynier’s speeches, he always brags about the Western Cape Rapid School Build programme, and how we can build schools in less than 100 days. He did not tell you about how he failed to spend his infrastructure budget last year and about the delays in building new schools. I will tell you something about this great Western Cape government. It is that if we can do nothing, we will do nothing. We want the private sector to do it. We will even pay them to do it. In fact, we are giving them free government owned land to build private schools that charge fees that most parents cannot afford, while we let our no-fee government schools crumble. Even more, we grant private actors power through school governing body structures as part of our self-bolstering innovation of donor-funded and collaboration schools. We hold our undying love for private actors in this province. In fact, we hope to infiltrate the government of national unity and use our power to introduce as many private actors as possible through all our sectors.
We have decided to give up on fixing fences in some schools. We say it is the school’s fault for letting gangsters come into their communities and rip holes in fences. It is not our problem.
We do not care about learners’ safety. When we think about crime, we do not think about the root causes of crime. We are happy to keep people poor, without services, and in desperate situations. In fact, the responsibility for rising crime rates lies with the national government’s refusal to devolve policing powers rather than our failure as provincial government. This is why so many learners were shot and killed on their way to and from school last year. This is why most schools do not provide adequate psychosocial support. This is why extortionist and gangsterism will continue to run our streets.
Our message is clear – black child, you are on your own.
If you are left on your own as a child, you will also be left on your own as an adult.
If you want a job, you must find it. You can use the Getting YOU to work initiative but remember, the programme only covers specific bus routes and requires a pre-scheduled interview, not dropping off CVs. If you want, you can upload your CV on our online platform. Good luck in your attempt to find a job. We are not in the business of addressing structural, long-term unemployment issues. Maybe we can give you a 2-month EPWP job, but only if you are lucky. And we will pay you below minimum wage.
Your right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment depends on where you live and what you contribute. High-quality, regular municipal services are reserved for ratepayers in suburbs. We do however collect waste, address overflowing sewage and fix streetlights in informal settlements and townships when we can – the Western Cape Government is working to strengthen the capacity of municipalities to perform their functions, as part of its constitutional mandate. Especially when these municipalities are led by my party, the DA.
If you want affordable, quality and safe accommodation close to your university/TVET college, you must pay for it.
But if you want drugs or alcohol, we will make sure that there is a liquor store close to you. We love our wine industry here in the Western Cape, and we will do anything to make sure that they can sell their booze.
So young people, I have good news for you. If you do not get into university, then your options out of school are to be a waiter or to be in waithood. Hm, what was that? All the restaurants on the Atlantic seaboard only hire white waiters?. Nevermind. Just one option then.
Are you feeling stressed? A little triggered? Shame man. Maybe you should go see a psychologist. You can try to do that at one of our public hospitals. Good luck!
Me? I have medical aid. My party and I are doing everything we can to make sure that we keep private healthcare services to ourselves. We do not want National Health Insurance.
This is the way of the Western Cape. This is the state of the province.
We are ardent ideologues. Our view is that the role of government is to do as little as possible, and allow the private sector to take the wheel. We try to make it easy for them by giving them subsidies, making sure that they don’t have to interact with poor people, and turning a blind eye when they break the rules here and there. Some might look at this and say it is corruption. But no. These are the things you do to promote economic growth. As long as rich people are happy and can make more money in this province, we are happy.
What is our solution to poverty? Economic growth.
To hunger? Economic growth.
To jobs? Economic growth.
Who will benefit from economic growth? Not you.
Did you know that inequality in the Western Cape is the highest in all of South Africa? And it is growing. At least we got some growth on one thing.
We are the Western Cape government. We are not concerned about how business gets done, who it gets done by, or how the profits are shared. But we prefer it when these businesses are white and wealthy. We like these people more.
I think we are too kind as a government anyway. Through the GNU, we give out R370 to poor people for free. But really, those people do not deserve it. They should at least be looking for jobs, even though there’s no jobs for them. But it’s okay. As long as poor people do not get too angry.
Let me rephrase – as long as they do not get too angry at us. It is okay for them to be angry at each other on the Cape Flats. We will leave it to them to deal with the violence, the potholes, and the pit latrines there. They just must not bring it to my side of town. The Atlantic seaboard and the Southern Suburbs are for me and my friends to drink wine and be merry. We will fix the trains and expand the myCiti bus routes so that they can come to clean up after us, but we will raise the prices to limit their spending here.
But good heavens, did you know that some of them actually want to live here? Can you imagine? No, no, no. We are not going to let that happen. We really like all these digital nomads from Europe and the USA. It feels like the old days. They are bringing so much money to my landlord friends. We are even getting rid of people to make more space for them. The families of Searle Street managed to survive the Apartheid government’s forced removals in District 6, but can they defeat the brutal hand of late-stage capitalism under our stewardship? We are reinventing new ways to relive the old days.
We are also building a wall! Do not leave here thinking I do not care about the townships. I do. I am building you a whole wall for R115 million. In case I have not made it clear, we love pretending you do not exist. And we love it even more if we can contain your violence to yourselves. So with our partners in the GNU, we will send in the military to shoot you down and we will build a wall to keep you away from us when we drive along the N2.
And with that said, let me scoot before any of you come at me.
I thank you!