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Media reports over the weekend of the North-West Province having to return R17 billion in unspent budgets to National Treasury only serve to demonstrate the need to remove this caring and failing government. 

This comes in the face of a Province already known as one of the most dysfunctional in the country. While the province wants to play down the crisis, the truth is its under expenditure is already flattered by an adjustment budget that reduced allocations last year in light of underperformance. 

The lived experiences of the residents of this province have been in complete regression of infrastructure and a failure to take services to communities living without the dignity of water, electricity and sanitation. When one travels this province, whether it is the towns or the rural villages, one can see the dire need for roads, homes, sub-stations, water pipes, schools, universities, and clinics. 

This is what makes the failure of the provincial government to spend the precious resources allocated to it unforgivable. 

With only a 78% pass rate, the North-West Department of Education was one of the greatest offenders in the under expenditure, spending only 46% of its budget. In a province where many schools lack the fundamental infrastructure to provide a quality education it is evil that our children will be deprived the benefits that should have arisen from this expenditure. 

While many have commented on the situation, most have missed the most fundamental question. What consequences will flow form this failure? Given the track record of Premier Maape and the ANC in the North-West the only hope of accountability lies in the removal of this failing government in 2024. 

Issued by ActionSA North-West Provincial Chairperson, Kgosi Kwena Mangope