Government’s plan with super cities a recipe for disaster 

27 June 2019

The government's plan to create super cities in South Africa is a recipe for disaster seeing as our existing cities and towns are not even maintained properly.

In his reply to the State of the Nation Address (SONA) debate yesterday, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that he hopes that these "super cities" will accommodate another 10 million people by 2030. He, however, said in the same breath that the current situation in our cities is not sustainable and that there is already a backlog with building schools, clinics and hospitals.

In response, Minister Patricia de Lille said that the private sector must get involved in the building and maintenance of infrastructure for a period of 20 years after which the infrastructure will be transferred to the state.

With the current state of our municipalities where service delivery has deteriorated drastically due to poor management and the collapse of infrastructure, the FF Plus cannot see how creating so-called super cities will help to solve the problem.

The FF Plus is of the opinion that it will only plunge existing cities into even more trouble. If the private sector does not buy into the Minister's suggestion, this plan of building super cities will just make everything worse.

It is good to have ideals for the future, but if one takes South Africa's current political circumstances, the mismanagement and corruption into account, it is clear that the ideal of building super cities like America is simply not attainable, particularly not under ANC rule.

The depopulation of the rural areas must urgently be stopped and the ideal model would be to abolish racially motivated legislation like Affirmative Action (AA) and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), to eradicate crime and to make South Africa more attractive for foreign investors.

In this way, economic growth will be ensured and enough job opportunities will be created all though South Africa. Rural economies, job creation and growth will also be stimulated.

The FF Plus first wants to see existing infrastructure being upgraded and properly maintained and managed before the government starts dreaming about super cities.

Issued by Philip van Staden, FF Plus MP and parliamentary spokesperson: Infrastructure and Public Works, 27 June 2019