Speech by the Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Alderman
Patricia de Lille, at the signing of the Memorandum of
Understanding with the Informal Settlements Network
on 19 April 2012
Honoured guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning, goeiemore, molweni.
The City of Cape Town is committed to being a Caring and Inclusive City
that is Well-Run.
That means being a City that is a home for all its citizens, no matter who
they are.
It means building relationships that help Cape Town move forward.
Because the future of Cape Town rests with its people.
We have many obligations as government.
We have to know when to form partnerships to get things done.
We have to be able to work with people to achieve our goals.
As local government, we are enjoined by the Constitution and legislation
to be the agent of service delivery.
The City is committed to that obligation.
Every day, we explore ways to move beyond mere compliance and deliver
even more.
Governments have to be innovative and dynamic.
We have to constantly revise our targets so that we do more for
everyone.
The City of Cape Town is committed to helping those who need our
assistance the most, people who need us to be strong partners.
Often, those people live in informal settlements and backyarder
communities.
We have already done a great deal to help those who live in informal
settlements.
Our extensive electrification, water provision and waste management
systems have meant that informal settlements, where we can act on
unencumbered land and where we are not prevented from acting by
national legislation, experience maximised service delivery.
We have also launched our Backyarder Strategy that aims to help those
living in backyarder communities.
A first for South Africa, the strategy sees us rolling out services to
communities who are waiting for formal housing so that they can live with
dignity and a measure of independence.
But government must never be satisfied with service delivery levels: we
must always ask what more can we do?
This challenge is made all the more apparent by the forces of
urbanisation.
Like all major growing cities, we face the prospect of ever more people
moving to Cape Town to take advantage of all that our city has to offer,
especially our excellent services.
We welcome everyone to our city.
But we must face the truth that the arrival of new people brings with it
shifting delivery targets every year.
And so we have to constantly adapt and revise our strategies to keep up
to date with the needs of all of our people.
But an urbanisation policy needs to be sophisticated in recognising
partners that can help activate delivery objectives on the ground.
That is the significance of this Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)
today.
Working with the Informal Settlements Network (ISN) and the Community
Organisation Resources Centre (CORC), the City of Cape Town will be able
to do even more.
Our partners in this MOU will help us deliver more services to those in
informal settlements and backyarder communities.
And working with our partners, we will continue to be national leaders in
service delivery, making a great city even greater.