This is the first newsletter of the 5000 club. The Club is to consist of a group of residents and business people who live in or close to my constituency in the greater Sandton/Alexandra area of Johannesburg as well as some friends who may be interested in keeping up to date. The newsletter will go out every 4 to 6 weeks with an update on key happenings in parliament as well as a summary of political activity in the north of Johannesburg. Please assist by adding friends to this group or email me their addresses for adding. We will be setting up a website soon with pictures, newsletter archives and other information. If you receive this newsletter, please be aware that I have added you as someone I believe would be interested in this initiative.  We are starting with around 2000 names and hope to grow it to 5000.

In this edition:

Arriving in Parliament in the first week of May, we were impressed with how slick everything was. In an hour or two we had received our access cards, been placed on the payroll and processed for medical, pension and given access to the opening ceremony. Imagine our alarm when all the helpful officials disappeared and we were all left to fend for ourselves. Getting an office, accommodation, a telephone, a computer, a parking space and so on proved to be an ordeal I shall try to forget. After six months, I have only just received a computer. I had to clamp the wheels of the presidential security police in order to gain access to my allocated parking! We also needed to serve eviction notices to remove the people living in some of our accommodation. Instead of the 3 parliamentary villages, it would make much more sense to purchase old apartment blocks in the Cape Town CBD for MP's to live  and walk to work -instead of an hours commute every morning! I have suggested as much to Mr. Trevor Manual.

The programme of Parliament has been busy. Having elected a President, Speaker and Deputy Speaker, we got off to the business of Parliament, approving legislation, appointing of the various boards and oversight of the government departments. I have been allocated to the labour portfolio and this committee has been heavily involved in proposals for the limiting or outright banning of labour brokers.  The DA is offering much better alternatives to the disastrous proposals of Cosatu. We have also been overseeing the 23 Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) and their plans to retrain those who are being retrenched due to the recession. I have my doubts about this programme as it appears to be far too late in coming. Hundreds of thousands of people are already been retrenched and lost to the system. 

Other key items considered were the various boards of the chapter 9 institutions. The most problematic being the SABC board which has become heavily politicised. A number of the other boards were handled reasonably well, but the ANC has appointed cronies to the interim SABC board and it appears to be heading down that same road for the final board appointments. The JSC appointments seem to also be Zuma cronies, who then proceeded to let Judge Hlophe off without a full hearing. Crime States were released this week and still show unacceptably high crime rates, particularly murder and rape cases. There is, as usual, some small improvement such as the slight drop in the murder rate.

The DA caucus has decided to do as much as we can in the cause for the environment. In order to offset my carbon footprint, I will be planting trees in our constituency as a way of lessening the impact of our flights to Cape Town etc. I helped plant a tree in Rosebank in September with the RMD (Rosebank Management District) and am busy purchasing trees to be planted at a school in Alexandra. 

We kicked off our Constituency planning with a strategic planning workshop on 14 September. All DA members in the constituency were invited and offered an opportunity to air their views. We had over 150 people attend the workshop from Sandton, Rosebank, Randburg, Alexandra and beyond and many diverse suggestions were offered. We are in the process of collating all of the inputs and turning this into a strategic plan for the constituency. It was important for us to hear the views of the grassroots membership and not take decisions at a leadership level which affect people.

 

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