Address by the Executive Mayor of Cape Town,
Alderman Patricia de Lille, to the Cape Town
Press Club on 13 June 2012
Reflections on my administration’s first year in office
I would like to thank you all for welcoming me here to address you today.
It is always an honour to appear before the club and share the
perspectives of members, from whatever section of society they may
represent, from colleagues in government, to members of civil society,
business leaders and of course, our friends in the press.
I believe that this press club, with its rich history, is one of the many
assets that truly add to the rich texture of this city and make Cape Town
special.
Having said that let me also say that I am humbled to be here today.
Though I have addressed you before as an opposition leader and from the
campaign trail, this is my first time speaking to you as leader of a
government.
What is humbling about it is the natural hesitation a person, especially a
politician, has to review themselves, openly and honestly, in a public
forum, away from party slogans.
It requires a great deal of introspection and self-examination.
However, these are qualities I believe all governments should have in
order to ensure that they are delivering on their mandate and providing
for citizens and partnering with them to access opportunities.
This is all part of a new culture of critical monitoring and evaluation our
administration has made a cornerstone of the City of Cape Town.
We came into office with a basic platform of building the City on five
pillars: the Opportunity City; the Safe City; the Caring City; the Inclusive
City; and the Well-run City.
These pillars were to provide strategic focus areas for our efforts to create
the economic enabling environment in which jobs could be created and
opportunities could grow and where those who needed help would receive
it.
And we chose numerous delivery arms to achieve these ends, such as
initiating a policy review that aims to help us achieve a more lasting
reconciliation through direct and indirect redress measures.
In so doing, we would improve delivery and make Cape Town a place that
rightfully celebrates its diversity.
These are bold political gestures and they have required the necessary
actions and structures to back them up.
So we rearranged City Directorates, creating the Directorate of Tourism,
Events and Marketing and the Directorate of Environmental, Economic
and Spatial Planning, and the Directorate of Social Development and Early
Childhood Development.
We have created a political and administrative team, the most diverse in
the City’s history, that combines a range of skill-sets and expertise.
Council meetings, and other committee meetings, have been made more
frequent to speed up decision-making.
And perhaps most significantly, we have invested resources over the past
year to ensure that we have a consolidated strategy that will inform
everything we do, across all layers of our administration.
I refer to the Integrated Development Plan, the IDP, which stands as the
living organisational structure that gives life to our electoral mandate.
It is supported by a new Transversal Management System for the City
and our newly formed Strategic Policy Unit, which is in the process of
conducting a strategic policy review of the City as well as putting in place
revised mechanisms of monitoring and evaluation.
And we have reached out to business by making them our strategic
partners in the Economic Development Partnership (EDP), a dynamic,
private-sector led body of combined business and marketing intelligence
that will help us map effective economic strategies for the whole cityregion.
These are significant advances for the City.
They are a demonstration of the kind of change possible when one truly
believes in investing in the best models of management and modern
government.
But part of our belief in these systems stems from the fact that we work
with them and in them as part of our daily lives.
For ordinary people, the reassurance of systems being put in place does
not mean much when there are still outstanding service delivery issues.
So let me speak to the tangible products of these government practices.
We have resolved the issue of the Makhaza toilets; improved service
delivery in Hangberg; actively changed the city’s landscape with our
renaming policy, renaming major roads after figures such as Nelson
Mandela, Helen Suzman, and Christiaan Barnard; been named the World
Design Capital for 2014; hosted a successful Tweede Nuwe Jaar; had
Table Mountain named as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the
World; maintained our AA credit rating from Moody’s; we have been
awarded our eighth consecutive unqualified audit; and we have been
awarded a whole host of accolades from around the world in the past
year, 44 at the last count as available on the City’s website.
Furthermore, our policy agenda has included a special focus on redress
and reconciliation.
In that regard, we have already sold City land under market value to
assist with a contentious land claim in Claremont and undertaken to
facilitate similar processes.
We have initiated a policy first for South Africa by providing water,
sanitation and electricity to backyarders on Council-owned property.
We have created 34 000 job opportunities through 228 projects in the
City’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), in the process fully
accessing all incentives from the national government, to the value of
R19,2 million.
And further in terms of redress, we have assigned an additional R10
million in this year’s budget to the poorest wards in the city.
In all, we have passed a budget over R30 billion, spending more on
capital projects than Johannesburg in both absolute and relative terms.
That type of spending is leading to major investments that will truly
transform this city, including in transport infrastructure where the MyCiti
service will be rolled-out to the South-East of the City, including
Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, by the end of next year and a broadband
network that will link the whole metro and change the way people
communicate.
This is in addition to the R1,2 billion in relief we provide for the poor
through our indigent policy proving that, in total, our budgeting and
governing approach is pro growth, pro poor and pro jobs.
So I believe that we are making progress.
I believe that we are actively living up to the constitutional imperative of
being the drivers of social and economic development as local
government.
But we still face challenges.
To be honest with you, and with ourselves, we know that there are
obstacles we still need to overcome to live up to our potential.
We need to improve the monitoring of service provision in informal
settlements.
We have experienced some service delivery protests in the past year.
Some of them were political agitations while others were based on
legitimate concerns.
We will always, however, listen to the concerns of communities and
engage with them.
I believe that we have done this most powerfully recently through the
Enkanini electrification process.
This process, in three phases and costing millions of Rands will provide
power to people who never had it before.
The first phase will cost R8 million, the second phase R27 million and the
third and final phase will cost R54 million.
We have to find the right balance between delivering service delivery
outcomes and complying with the Auditor General.
We have to find a way of influencing the decisions of State-Owned
Enterprises in Cape Town so that we have some say in all major economic
factors in the city.
And we need to constantly revise our strategies in the face of numerous
challenges, most especially increased urbanisation.
In conclusion, the work of government isn’t easy.
But it is a challenge undertaken for our citizens to ensure that everyone
benefits from this democracy.
It requires partners.
It requires a vision.
But most of all, it requires honesty.
Thank you.