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With national elections only about a month away, DA leader Helen Zille hit the campaign trail on the Garden Route on Wednesday.
As part of her campaign, Zille has been sharing with communities in the region the party's successes in the Western Cape since taking control of the province about five years ago.
One of her ports of call yesterday was a George township, Borchards - a ward the DA only recently won during a by-election.
"As this has until recently been an ANC ward, we have a lot to do here, but the wonderful thing is [since the DA took control of the ward] every single home, formal or informal, now has electricity. In the rest of the country there is no delivery of electricity in informal settlements, only in the Western Cape," Zille said.
She added 95% of residents in the province living in informal homes have access to electricity.
Despite heavy rain yesterday, residents and DA supporters gathered in the streets of Borchards to raise their concerns.
"Yes, the party has done a lot for the people in the Western Cape, but there is a lot that still needs to be done," resident Terri-Anne Fischer said.
"We can't go anywhere in this community without feeling unsafe. There is a lot of crime, violence and other social ills. The DA needs to step it up to address these issues. The long waiting period for government housing has also left many people frustrated. This process needs to be more efficient."
"The biggest challenges facing the communities, and I've seen it here again today, is drug and alcohol abuse and there is nothing a government can do to enable a person to live a better life if he is an addict."
She added that other than rehabilitation there was very little a government could do to enable someone to progress in life and to contribute to the economy. "We now have 24 rehabilitation centres in the Western Cape to help people get off drugs," Zille said.
Nationally, she said one of the party's biggest challenges was convincing traditional ANC supporters that voting for the opposition "was not betrayal" but that they had the right and the power "to vote out a corrupt government".
Zille also highlighted some of the party's other successes in the province including that the province had the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the highest access to water and sanitation in South Africa and 78% of the provincial government budget has been redistributed among poor communities and used to provide about 500 000 children with a meal a day and ensuring that every child has a textbook for every subject.
Zille also visited Wilderness outside George before moving on to Oudtshoorn.
