Facts show that we deliver services in poor communities

Yesterday, the Deputy Mayor and I presented, at a media briefing, a comprehensive document outlining the City of Cape Town's targeted expenditure in previously disadvantaged areas.

The document illustrates in great detail how the City gives life to our commitment to redress and redistribution as we systematically tackle the legacy of the investment patterns of the Apartheid era in various parts of the city.

But we have to maintain a delicate balance considering that, while we have a moral imperative to redress the wrongs of the past, we also have to ensure that we make strategic investments that will ensure that Cape Town remains a city able to contend with the economic and social demands of an increasingly complex world.

Therefore, while we spend a large proportion on the direct needs of the poor, we also have to ensure that we create the economic enabling environment in which we play our part to generate the conditions for job creating economic growth.

This approach speaks to the very heart of our long-term approach to beat poverty: direct relief coupled with long-term job creation.

The document we released was also important in that it shows that no longer can any organisation, including the ANCYL, falsely claim that the City does nothing for the poor.

Of course, such claims not only misrepresent the facts on the ground, but lower the level of debate as we try and tackle the real challenges that we still face as a society.

Because the simple reality is that of the City's R18 billion budget that is focused on direct service delivery, R10.8 billion or 57.2% is spent on poor people.

This means that 57.2% of the budget is spent on:

• Targeted expenditure in previously disadvantaged areas;
• The provision of free basic services; and
• The provision of services and infrastructure in all informal settlements and formal poor areas.

Furthermore, in the clearest possible illustration yet of this City's commitment to ease the plight of the poor and the vulnerable, approximately 1.9 million Capetonians benefit from the City's basket of free basic services, including a free allocation of water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal.

In light of these facts, there is simply no way that political opportunists can claim with a straight face that this City does not care about the poor and the vulnerable when it is patently clear that the opposite is in fact true.

But of course, the ANCYL and others' arguments are not based on fact or reason, but more on misinformation, extravagant contradiction, and a disturbing disconnection from reality.

This is perhaps best shown by the ANCYL's recent call for the IRT system to be abolished. It has obviously not occurred to them that 64.8% of the IRT, ie. R1.6 billion of the total R2,5 billion total is targeted at the poor.

But then given past experience, and despite the fact that Khaya Yozi, the ANCYL Dullah Omar's chairperson is a member of this Council, it is clear that they simple do not understand how government and budgets work.

Just be to clear: This budget allocation will help fund the N2 express service from the Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha areas; the Wetton/Lansdown Corridor for routes serving Wynberg, Ottery, Lansdown, Hanover Park, Manenberg, Gugulethu, Nyanga, Cross Roads, Brown's Farm, Phillipi and Weltevreden Valley; and Phase 1 servicing Dunoon, Table View, Joe Slovo, Atlantis and Dunoon.

This is also information that Mr Yozi might want to share with Councillor Tony Erenreich, a long-time critic of the IRT system, who is also blissfully unaware of just how essential this investment is in providing infrastructure in previously disadvantaged areas and providing access to economic opportunities via affordable and safe public transport.

Of course, given this context, it is not surprising that the ANCYL is completely unaware of this fact given that they also appear to be unaware that this City spends 99.1% of its human settlements budget in poor areas, or that 85% of the health budget is spent in these areas, or that we spend 84.1% of our Social Development and Early Childhood Development budget in these areas.

It also seems to escape their attention that successive DA-led governments in this City have dramatically increased spending on service provision in informal settlements.

Since 2006/7 to the present, successive DA governments have spent R697 million in service provision in informal settlements. In this time period, the percentage of households with access to sanitation on a 1:5 ratio (the national norm) has increased from 47.1% to 88.2%. And access to water through the provision of standpipes on a 1:25 (national norm) ratio has ranged between 95% -100%.

These improvements in service delivery have occurred despite the fact that during this time the number of households in informal settlements as a result of urbanisation has increased by almost 50 000, from 154 761 to approximately 193 951.

The ANCYL and its fellow travellers can no longer make empty statements about this City's commitment to the poor in light of this overwhelming evidence.

We have presented the facts which show how we give life to our commitment to redress and redistribution. We are acutely conscious that there remain great needs in the city and that there is still an enormous amount to do.

I am confident that, with the balance we have achieved, we will continue to make Cape Town an even greater city for all who live in it. But we will no longer put up with blatant lies questioning our commitment to the poor.

This article first appeared in Cape Town This Week the weekly newsletter by the Executive Mayor of Cape Town, Alderman Patricia de Lille

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