Katherine Christie

Katherine Christie is a South African politician and a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Democratic Alliance (DA). Quotes I'm very passionate about governance and I'm enjoying this new Department, which is meant to be holding our government officials and ministers accountable for their work. What's very interesting is that we've got the National State Enterprises Bill before us and as a party, we've been very concerned about the original draft plan to centralise control even more under the President and his ministers. This is exactly where everything went wrong during the nine wasted years, 2008 to 2017, where a few people around the ministers and the president were able to hollow out our state enterprises, ransack, loot and plunder. For example, ESKOM is in so much debt and it's increased its tariffs so many times, way above the inflation rate. I grew up immersed in politics in our very divided and unjust society. I grew up in Johannesburg and my father was a Lawyer and my mother was the National Director of the South African Institute of International Affairs. So, we sat around the table and we discussed the Soviet Union, communist Eastern Europe, the Cold War, World War I, World War II, then apartheid. My parents volunteered for Helen Suzman, who was the only member of parliament for the Progressive Federal Party for 13 years, the only woman standing up against Apartheid. So, we lived in her constituency in Parktown, Johannesburg. We were always raising money, trying to take a stand as far as possible within legal boundaries against Apartheid. I sit on the Committee for the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME). My passion is governance, So from the age of 24, I've served on boards and my first position was Treasurer of Manenberg Preschool. Manenberg Preschool is where I learned everything I know about governance, about honesty, transparency, accountability, and managing money well, and that's what the DPME is about. It's about holding every level of government, local, provincial and national, and then every department of government on all these three levels accountable for spending the money that they allocated honestly, and transparently and using it for services, not to line their pockets and purchase fancy clothes, cars and pay salaries to all their relatives External links Category:Living people