The New National Party has committed itself to building almost a quarter of a million houses by 2010 as part of a blueprint for eliminating the Western Cape’s housing backlog.
The plan is contained in the party’s 92-page manifesto for the province, released on Monday by NNP leader and Western Cape premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
He said the manifesto, which has been almost two years in the making, was ”our vehicle for building excellence in government over the next decade”.
It comes as the NNP, the African National Congress (its coalition partner in the provincial government) and the opposition Democratic Alliance square up in a bitterly contested battle for control of the province.
The Western Cape is the only province where the NNP shares the government.
The manifesto said the ”stability and long-term nature” of the coalition made it possible for the province to put in place 10- and 15-year plans in cooperation with national and local governments ”in ways that were not possible before”.
It said the NNP in the government would reprioritise budgets and work towards delivering 40 000 housing units a year, halving the number of people in informal housing by 2010 and wiping out the housing backlog by 2019.
About 30 000 of this annual quota would be delivered in the Cape Town metropolitan area.
”The NNP believes that it is not morally defensible to take any other approach to housing than one which will achieve the goal of wiping out the housing backlog,” it said.
The manifesto also committed the NNP to work for the creation of up to 160 000 new jobs in the formal sector, more than half of them through increased tourism.
This would be accomplished in part by allocating an additional R20-million a year to tourism marketing.
In addition, the NNP would aim to create 120 000 short-term jobs and skills training opportunities by 2008 through expanded public works programmes.
In order to broaden the ownership base of the economy it would work to increase access to land through accelerated land reform.
The manifesto also committed the NNP to:
- Bringing the HIV infection rate below 10%, effectively eliminating HIV-positive births;
- Creating a provincial poverty fund of R100-million for targeted alleviation projects;
- Working with the national and local government to halve crime by 2010;
- A 90% matric pass rate and reduction of the educator-learner ratio in primary schools from the current 39:1 to 33:1; and
- Establishing a ”one nation fund” with R10-million start-up funding, to advance reconciliation and nation-building.
— Sapa