SPEECH BY THE CITY'S EXECUTIVE MAYOR, PATRICIA DE LILLE, AT THE FULL COUNCIL MEETING ON 25 SEPTEMBER 2014
Good morning, goeie more, molweni, as-salaam alaikum, shalom,
Shana tova to all of our Jewish residents- I wish you all a happy and prosperous new year.
Mr. Speaker,
The work of government requires leadership and long-term planning to affect real-world change.
What that means is that we have to have a vision for the future that helps us redress the sins of the past in the interests of all of the people of this City.
That means leadership with a strong strategic vision.
It means having plans in place to try and achieve that vision along with the necessary resources.
And it requires relentless leadership to be able to drive the process of positive change through the administration and the communities that we serve.
As this Council knows, the national government is leading a programme called ‘Back to Basics' through the presidency and the national department of cooperative governance and traditional affairs.
I had the privilege to attend the launch of this programme of action which is intended to bring a new focus on local government issues.
Last week, both President Zuma and Minister for COGTA Pravin Gordhan spoke about the need for clear plans for municipalities and a focus on service delivery basics in order to achieve service delivery excellence.
I am proud to say that in all of these indicators, we are leading our fellow municipalities, not least the ANC flagship metro of Johannesburg which has been experiencing chronic water, power outages, and the ongoing extreme problems with its billing system.
We have a clear five year-plan in the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) which informs all of our planning cycles.
We have medium and long-term strategies in the Economic Growth and Social Development strategies which inform our long-term resource allocation.
We are breaking down the planning silos in departments with transversal management and we have just launched a new city-wide revision of the methodology of planning.
We are not only getting the basics right- we have moved far beyond them into areas of service delivery excellence and innovation as path-leaders in the public sector in South Africa.
As a City government, we set ourselves the task of being innovative and creative.
What we have come up with is to join the tide of a data revolution that is becoming entrenched in other parts of the globe as part of our steps towards making Cape Town the digital city of Africa.
Before Council today is the consideration of an open data policy that will make our data sets open to the public and I would like to acknowledge the presence of representatives from Google South Africa who have come to share this experience with us.
Cities have tremendous amounts of raw information from traffic information, to area data that are under-utilised.
While we package and understand certain types of information in certain ways to help us in our decision-making, vast quantities of data could be used by others in ways we might not imagine.
These might apply to creating new products for the city, understanding types of market better, or even finding some unexplored gap in the way we do business or interact with each other for some enterprising entrepreneur.
Of course, if adopted, open data implementation in the City of Cape Town will be rolled-out responsibly.
It is our duty to ensure that we adhere to the constitution and legal framework of our country and protect private and sensitive information where necessary.
As such, we have designed a system of checks and balances for each data set that is escalated for public release.
This is in keeping with international best practice and with our obligations as responsible custodians of the public trust.
I believe this initiative will help cement our status as creative leaders in local government practice.
This leadership has been recognised in two awards we have received recently at the Eco-Logic awards.
This includes being the leading metro for sustainability best practice in our approach to governance through the Mayor's Portfolio on Urban Sustainability.
This portfolio profiled 34 projects as part of the World Design Capital where design is being used to enhance sustainable government practices.
And it includes an award, along with the Shark Spotters, in the Eco-Innovation category in recognition of our efforts to create shark exclusion zones with minimal impact on marine life.
These rewards of excellence demonstrate a government willing to lead- leadership which we have also extended to creating opportunities for those who need it the most or who are seeking to enter the workforce for the first time.
Since 2011, the City has created more than 100 000 work opportunities through the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).
EPWP projects now occur at nearly 950 sites around the City, providing economic relief for EPWP workers and helping to improve service delivery.
And the City apprenticeship programme has recently seen the graduation of 90 people from disadvantaged areas who the City sponsored to learn a trade within the City along with their theoretical training and wages.
Over two years, we invested over R20 million in these apprentices.
This is in addition to the R21,5 million that the Utility Services Directorate spends on internal and external bursaries, developmental training, learnerships and other apprenticeships.
While all of these apprentices have the skills to enter the marketplace to provide skills much needed by the private sector, I am very happy to say that 74 of them have chosen to stay with the City and start adding value to the utility services directorate.
What is even more gratifying is that a significant portion of these apprentices were women who qualified in traditionally male professions, becoming diesel mechanics, fitters, boiler-makers, auto-electricians, plumbers, carpenters and bricklayers.
This programme will continue next year and we will continue to use the resources and institutional capacity at our disposal to prepare people to become productive members of the economy and workforce.
In terms of investments in the economy, I am also pleased to report that our MyCiti investments, which has amounted to R6,5 billion thus far.
This includes over R300 million investment in Mitchell's Plain and Khayelitsha.
Our R6.5 billion investment includes:
R2,5 billion in the form of long-term operating contracts, empowering former taxi owners.
CODETA and the Route Six Taxi Association formed a Vehicle Operating Company (VOC) with Golden Arrow Bus Services and signed a three-year contract with the City, worth around R300 million, to run the service.
For the N2 Express, the City made a capital investment of R200 million for the construction of bus stations and stops and the procurement of buses.
At a cost of over R29 000 to train each driver, the final investment will see more than R2,5 million spent on training drivers - for the N2 Express service alone.
Since the launch of the MyCiTi service, the City has invested around R6,7 million to train around 447 drivers on all active MyCiTi routes, including the N2 Express.
The MyCity project has arguably been the City's largest Black Economic Empowerment scheme undertaken to date.
Industry changes have allowed former taxi owners to establish the Vehicle Operating Company that manages the MyCiti service with the Golden Arrow Bus Service (GABS).
Indeed, up to 66% of the company that runs the MyCiti N2 Express service on the Cape Flats is owned by CODETA and the Route Six Taxi Association.
This shows that the MyCiti network is not just about creating a means to move people around- it is also about moving people forward by creating a broad platform of opportunity.
It is this kind of leadership that helps us progress as a society.
But progress is not only about creating and encouraging economic opportunity and growth- it is also about promoting reconciliation and redress.
In this regard, I am pleased to confirm to Council our proposal to lease the Granary building to the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation.
The recent retirement of the Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu from public office has allowed him to focus his energy on his foundation, known as the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.
The foundation's main functions are to develop and manage partnerships and legacy-promoting programmes, and to contribute to the positioning of Cape Town as a world capital for the intellectual and practical pursuit of local and global peace, morality and human dignity.
The Granary has the prospect of representing the work of a man who has come to symbolise both hope and peace.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, has received numerous awards from all over the world acknowledging his life's work as one of the greatest apartheid activists and living moral icons of our time.
It would therefore be an honour for the City of Cape Town to pay homage to him for his contributions towards peace and reconciliation in our country.
On that note, let me state that all preparations for the 14th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates are going ahead as planned.
South African laureates, including Archbishop Tutu, have written to all invitees urging them to attend.
We want to send a message that the South African government's treatment of the Dalai Lama will not go unchallenged.
If we give up on the summit at this stage, we will betray Madiba's legacy by standing up to forces that would suppress peaceful dialogue, including the South African government.
Mr. Speaker, more broadly in terms of redress, the City's CRU refurbishment programme in Manenberg is progressing well with 432 out of the 624 rental units now completed.
I would like to commend City staff and human settlements leadership for getting this programme back on track after a key subcontractor was liquidated and City staff faced gang violence in the area.
Despite these challenges, we have managed to keep our programme of redress and reconciliation on track in order to improve the lives of the people of this City.
These efforts, however, are not helped by the recent incidents of public violence in the city.
Up to this point, these disruptions have included:
Two buses set alight at the Nyanga terminus
Four buses set alight along Govan Mbeki Road in Philippi
Sporadic stoning incidents in Nyanga and Philippi
Tyres set alight at the intersection of Vanguard Drive and Oliver Tambo Drive
Traffic disruptions at various spots along the N2 highway
The assault of 11 Golden Arrow Bus Services bus drivers
This excludes the attacks on the infrastructure of the Metrorail service that drew the central line's operations to a halt and severely compromised commuter operations.
Thousands of commuters were disrupted getting to work and millions of rands worth of public property has been destroyed.
These coordinated acts of sabotage stop people from getting to work and accessing opportunities as well as compromising service delivery, especially in our poorer communities.
But these actions are of a type.
They are calculated to occur at strategic points and in a particular sequence in order to try and make the city ungovernable.
They are the extension of politics by other means lead by proxy organisations for the opposition in this city and this province.
My message to these members of the opposition is that the City will not be beaten by you; we will not bow to agenda; and we will defeat you today, tomorrow and all the way to Election Day in 2016.
In conclusion, governing is about demonstrating leadership.
It is about understanding the challenges and working to find constructive and sustainable solutions.
Last week, President Zuma said that we cannot expect all of the problems in local government to have been solved already because we have only been fixing these matters since 1994.
What is more, we have only had the full suite of local government legislation as we now know it for around 12 years.
We know the difficulties we face and the very timeframes needed to make an impact.
That is because we exhibit responsibility as leaders.
Those who destroy property and lives to advance self-interested political agendas demonstrate neither responsibility nor indeed any of the qualities of leadership.
That is why they remain on the fringes of political life and sometimes become caricatures of themselves sitting in this Council, making the same tired and superficial points like a stuck record.
When it comes to the time for people to choose their leaders again, they will have to choose between a DA-led government working to redress the wrongs of the past on the one hand.
And on the other hand, they will have an opposition determined to destroy any hopes we have for a shared future.
And that opposition is not led by a so-called red mayor with two hats.
Rather, it is led by a clown with a red nose.
Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.
Issued by the City of Cape Town, September 25 2014
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