Alan Winde officially takes over from Helen Zille as premier of the Western Cape on Tuesday.
He’s got five years of enormous challenges ahead of him, something of which he is seemingly fully aware.
I spent some time chatting to him on my radio show on Friday.
While we had a lot of fun, I also managed to ask him the serious questions that’s on everyone’s mind about his plans for the province.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have gotten to know Winde fairly well over the years and this was not the first time we unpacked the Western Cape’s economic status and how the ever-present spectre of crime and gangsterism is holding us back.
FORMER PREMIER: Helen Zille hands over reigns to Winde. Photo: Armand Hough/INSLA.
Fortunately, he strikes me as being as serious about these issues as those of us who are most affected by it.
More importantly, he has always demonstrated (to me anyway) that he is a sincere man of action, who follows through on the encouraging words.
While he may not live the reality of gangsterism every day, he has surrounded himself with advisors and staff who do.
And he has taken the time to understand the issues.
Having taken care of the Economic Opportunities portfolio previously, Winde realises that his dreams of a prosperous and growing province will remain a dream if he doesn’t make a sustained impact on crime.
In fact, Winde tells me that crime, public transport and resilience are the three main challenges he sees to his goals to grow access to jobs, education and health in the province.
Gangsterism, drugs and an alarming murder rate is slowing further investment, which in turn is reducing jobs.
The never-ending problems with the trains are causing us to spend a lot more money on transport and a lot more time in traffic, which leads to crazy, around-the-clock congestion.
All of it is a nightmare for those at the forefront of our economic growth push, trying to sell the Western Cape to investors.
So Winde first has to successfully tackle many symptoms and make sure there are no unexpected side-affects to his solutions, before he can even start looking at the actual causes.
But it’s almost as if he has spent the past few years of his political life preparing for this set of challenges as the province’s first citizen.
He wasn’t just the MEC of Economic Development, but was himself an entrepreneur, so presumably he understands the setbacks that small businesses have to deal with.
TEAMWORK: Mayor Plato. Photo: Ayanda Ndamane/ANA.
Hopefully, he can roll a few boulders out of the way for them.
He has also previously looked after the province’s finance and tourism portfolios, which should give him good insight into keeping the books balanced, while making sure the province increases its global attractiveness.
This is all critical experience, but it could all come to naught if Winde doesn’t pay sustained attention to the crime and gangsterism issue.
Because in the end, the gangs could ruin it all for all of us.
And this is where Winde’s experience as Community Safety MEC could come in handy.
He understands the issues and can pretty much hit the ground running and implement his “Resilience” plan.
He accepts that policing is a national mandate, but also understands that he will fail at all the other goals, if he doesn’t somehow solve the crime issue.
Fortunately, he seems to get on with Mayor Dan Plato, so we can hopefully expect some co-operation (instead of one-upmanship) between their two offices.
Winde is also armed with tons of very good and practical ideas from the Safer Western Cape Conference, which he hosted a few months ago.
This all bodes very well, so hopefully the stars are aligned and we will see some inroads being made into the fight against crime.
On a different note, considering that Zille is departing Leeuwenhof amid yet another social media storm of her own making, Winde has promised to be a bit more circumspect with his Twitter posts.
Less entertaining drama, but more fitting, I’d say.