GOOD Speech by Brett Herron,
Unite for Change Leadership Council member and GOOD member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament
26 February 2026
Note to Editor: This speech was delivered during the SOPA debate
The Western Cape has various advantages over the other provinces.
- Mild Mediterranean climate coupled with sensational natural splendour, that underpins a lucrative tourist market, that creates many jobs.
- Well-developed food and wine culture, attractive to affluent locals and tourists alike, that creates many jobs.
- Some of the safest neighbourhoods in the country.
- Historically better-resourced education sector due to racially skewed resourcing, that has enabled the development of top schools and universities.
- A government that obtains demonstrably better audit outcomes than others, that drives its narrative of being exceptionally well run compared to other provinces.
With each State of the Province Address, the DA Premier takes credit for these advantages, while blaming the fact that all the advantages stop at Klipfontein Road, in Cape Town, on national government.
The Working Poor
This year, the Premier had something real to boast about: Boosting employment.
The more jobs the better; there’s no doubt about that!
But something is deeply wrong when the number of jobs increases while food insecurity increases at the same time.
We sadly heard nothing from the Premier about that!
He didn’t tell us that moderate food insecurity rose from 10.6% in 2024 to 13.1% in 2025.
Overall food insecurity, from mild to severe, now sits at roughly 50%, according to most recent reports.
We are witnessing the rise of a brutal new reality: the working poor.
Even those who are employed are hungry.
That is not how these sums are supposed to work.
More than half of our people are uncertain where their next meal will come from in a province that celebrates its economic success.
We must ask what these new jobs and our unemployment rate means when working class people are forced to choose between buying bread and electricity – having already forfeited up to a third of their salaries to pay for transport to get to work from their far-flung townships and informal settlements.
Race & Space
Property values in the Western Cape are skyrocketing with enormous benefit to those who already have money. The rest (remember the nearly 50% who are food insecure) are entrapped by their poverty.
The fact that NO affordable homes have been built in decent neighbourhoods in Western Cape towns and cities since the collapse of apartheid – and that all new homes built for people of colour are precisely where Vorster and Botha would have liked them, far from town, jobs, or social amenities – is a continuation of spatial injustice.
Spatial injustice is not just about badly located housing: It’s about dignity, redress, what schools your children can attend, the quality of healthcare you can expect… the whole bang shoot of equal rights and justice.
Health & Wealth
This year marks thirteen years since the decommissioning of GF Jooste Hospital. When it was decommissioned, people living on the “wrong” side of the M5 Highway were promised something better: A Klipfontein Regional Hospital. But now the people are told to wait until 2033.
This well-run government needs 20 years to build a hospital?
Who bears the costs? The people of Manenberg, Khayelitsha, Philippi, Crossroads, Mandalay, Heideveld, Mitchells Plain, Nyanga, Gugs, and others. Communities that are already carrying the heaviest burden of gang violence.
Crime & Grime
Manenberg has entered the top 30 murder stations in the country for the first time in years.
Mitchells Plain has already eclipsed last year’s murder total, and we still have a quarter of the year to go.
These are not just statistics. These are children growing up in trauma; parents burying children. Emergency rooms overwhelmed.
What in his wisdom does the Premier do?
He defunds health infrastructure, reduces the services that would treat gunshot wounds, trauma injuries, psychological scars, to fund a Safety Plan that the deployment of soldiers tells us is obviously not working.
If the Safety Plan was working, we would not be racing toward last year’s murder totals before the year has even ended.
The Premier blames spiralling crime on national government’s failure to invest but says nothing about developing a food security plan, says nothing about his government’s duty to invest in community development, education, built environments, social services and human dignity. Says nothing about inequality.
To Conclude
Yes, the Western Cape is beautiful, the wine is delicious, and a few more people have jobs.
But it’s led by a hollow man who simply doesn’t understand the need to lay places at the table for all its people.
The Premier was surprised by a recording he received of gun shots on the Cape Flats. He wanted to play it for everyone to hear.
Let me say, I haven’t asked, but I guess that nearly every member on this side of the house wake up to those recordings several times a week. It’s worrying that the Premier wanted to use it as a prop. It’s not a novelty. It’s why we keep saying the Safety Plan is misdirected resources.