Helen Zille Quotations

So, here we stand with the greatest challenge we have faced. We have got to provide a stable government in Cape Town.

If they were unanimous in their rejection we would close the door.

But we can't have land invasions, we can't allow that. We will provide temporary shelter while we wait for a long term solution. But this (relocation) is the start of that long term solution.

I have already stated that we cannot start signing contracts worth millions of rands until we have been given adequate information on how much the stadium will cost and how it will be paid for. Thus far we have not been presented with a proper financial model to work with, and it would be irresponsible to proceed without one.

For the time being, we cannot throw millions of rands of public money into starting this project unless we can be sure we will be able to finish it.

It is of extreme concern if our tracking system cannot track firearms. We had better make sure we know how to find them. If they are untraceable in the system it is bad enough, but if they are stolen, it is worse. We must report this to the police immediately.

We need to know where the money to build the stadium is coming from, how it will be funded and that we don't bankrupt the city in the process.

We cannot use the full budget to build just one stadium.

The result on the ground is that five million South Africans still have no access to any basic sanitation - It is time for - real delivery.

Press reports that there has been a staff purge at the Civic Centre are incorrect.

And the public do not want their money used in that kind of cavalier fashion.

This is obviously a complex problem and we are taking advice from senior legal counsel.

This government's preoccupation with race has nothing to do with empowering those disadvantaged by apartheid. It has everything to do with empowering a small elite through cronyism and patronage.

It's as big a scandal, for example, as the voluntary severance packages in schools which stripped education of so many skills and experience at the cost of billions of rands, and the schools system hasn't recovered.

It's quite some spare part. We're delighted to be able to get this. It has been a small miracle.

The blame for the current state of the fire services must fall squarely on the mayor.

The DA is about building on the good of the present for a better future. We believe Cape Town can be a model for the country and want to lead the city to that through... good service delivery.

The city has made a mess of firefighters' salaries because of the restructuring process, which is taking far too long.

The memorandum sets out all the DA's grievances and proposes a series of action steps which the DA believes the SABC should take -- including broadcasting the DA's manifesto launch live -- if it is serious about providing balanced and fair coverage of this and future elections.

In essence, the education department argues that the quality of the education children receive is irrelevant, as long as someone stands in front of the class.

For the ANC to cry 'sabotage' the night before crucial local government elections shows just how desperate they are to disguise their incompetence and mismanagement.

We will see at the end of the day. I don't like to speculate. Our goal in this election is to do better than in the last one.

Perhaps because the challenges we face in our country are so daunting, we are also tempted by shortcuts. We tell ourselves that if we invent a new acronym, or write a new empowerment charter, we can avoid some of the back-breaking work that sustained progress requires

The best tribute we can pay Madiba is to ensure that our political debate focuses on issues of how best we can ensure that each South African child, whatever the circumstances of their birth, inherits freedom they can use.

The DA is the only party in South Africa that has grown in every national election and that trend must continue, and it must accelerate, because South Africa is in a race against time to save our democracy.