6 Things Parks Tau must do to get Johannesburg working

Note to Editors: This statement summarises the content from a press conference earlier this morning.

Tomorrow, the Mayor of Johannesburg, Parks Tau, will deliver his State of the City Address. Mayor Tau will undoubtedly attempt to paint a picture of success in achieving outcomes and meeting targets in Johannesburg over the last year. 

The truth is that Mayor Tau's administration in the City of Johannesburg has had a disastrous year. Our most pressing challenges - poverty, unemployment and the delivery of basic services - are not being adequately addressed. 

The City failed to reach 89% of its own service delivery objectives for the last year. We have repeatedly asked for the Mayor to clarify what targets have been met, and which ones haven't. This has not been done yet and an explanation needs to be offered. 

Many of the programmes that the Mayor promised last year are not being effectively implemented, or not at all.

The Auditor-General released a report earlier this year showing that the City is failing at the most basic administrative tasks. It isn't repaying creditors at an appropriate rate, it can't keep track of all of the assets on its books and it doesn't know how much of the money owed to it is likely to be repaid.

All of these problems affect the poor worst by undermining basic service delivery.

We believe Mayor Tau should take urgent action on 6 key priority areas to turn things around in the City:

Growing the economy and creating jobs:

The 2011 UN report on the state of cities across the world indicates that Johannesburg is one of South Africa's most unequal cities, and one of the most unequal cities in the world. Inequality has grown in Johannesburg, because we have a massive unemployment problem. 30% of Johannesburg's working age population is currently unemployed. The unemployed are structurally locked out from opportunity, and this drives up the level of inequality in the city. This means that the City's apartheid economic and spacial framework has not been drastically altered.

As a first step in starting to address this problem, the City has to cut the cost of starting and running a business in Johannesburg. It needs to cut red tape, put incentives in place for small business and it needs to pay its bills on time. The City currently repays its bills after 159 days on average. This is killing small business service providers.

In addition, the City needs to make sure it spends its full Expanded Public Works Programme budget. In the last year, it underspent by R22 million.

We also need an update on the Soweto Empowerment Zone, which is an excellent proposal, but which is not being fully utilised. The DA has proposed that Mayor Tau offer stronger incentives, like subsidised rental agreements, to attract more businesses to the area.

Safety and Security:

Crime continues to plague the City of Johannesburg. Many of our people live in fear. Crime is also drastically increasing the cost of doing business in Johannesburg, thereby discouraging investment and undermining job creation.

The Mayor should start by implementing his promises from last year's state of the City Address. The JMPD 10+ programme, which was supposed to ensure the deployment of at least 10 new JMPD officers to each ward, has at best been only partially implemented. The Mayor must explain why this happened, and what will be done to fix the programme.

Housing Delivery:

There are thousands of individuals who applied for housing from the City of Johannesburg in 1996/1997, but have not yet received housing. The primary reason is that the City's 1996/1997 housing list is a complete shambles. Mayor Tau should firstly disclose exactly what the state of the housing list is, and then steps need to be taken to update the housing list.

We need to give communities realistic timeframes for expected housing delivery. Years of unfulfilled promises on housing delivery is fuelling tension and service delivery protests in areas like Diepsloot and Kya Sands.

Infrastructure:

Johannesburg has to invest more in its infrastructure. National Treasury guidelines indicate that metros should invest close to 18% of their budgets in infrastructure. Currently Johannesburg is achieving a 5% investment rate. This massive shortfall means that the City's infrastructure is systematically deteriorating over time. The City now loses more than R2 billion per year in water and electricity distribution losses, partially due to deteriorating infrastructure.

Billing:

The latest problem to hit the City is the announcement that all billing queries outstanding for longer than 90 days will be unilaterally closed. This means that billing queries - mostly lodged as a result of the billing crisis, and most unresolved due to the unresponsiveness of the billing assistance system - will be closed down, with moneys paid by the affected residents simply disappearing into the system. This is completely unacceptable and will affect many residents who through no fault of their own have incurred incorrect bills.

The DA wants to see a team of auditors appointed to systematically work through all bills to determine what money can legitimately be collected and which bills need to be written off.

Corruption:

Until now, Mayor Tau has said nothing of the serious allegations about the fixing of the R1.2 billion smart meter contract to Vivian Reddy's company. Mayor Tau needs to come out on record and express exactly what happened. The Mayor must take the lead, and lead by example on the issue of fraud and corruption.

Until this issue has been resolved, the DA will continue to harbour serious doubts about the integrity of Mayor Tau's administration. Unfortunately however it seems that the Public Protector's investigation of this matter will have to completed before we can get to the bottom of this.

Johannesburg has the potential to live up to its motto. We can be a world class city, that delivers world class services to all of our residents. But the quality of our City's financial administration simply isn't allowing it to deliver the services our people need.

Mayor Tau must take urgent action to change course, and start delivering. 

Statement issued by Mmusi Maimane, DA Caucus Leader in Johannesburg, May 8 2013

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