Speaker, I would like to welcome all Councillors, City officials, and members of the public.

During the recess and over the past few weeks there have been a number of important developments affecting this council which I will mention before we proceed with today's agenda.

Firstly, we have seen a steady decrease in the number of people seeking shelter in the wake of May's xenophobic violence.

The total number of people staying in community halls, private properties, mosques, churches and safe sites has dropped from 20 000 to 3200. Of these, about 2 200 are in the five safe sites, 100 in private venues, and 900 in community halls.

Following an agreement between the City and Province, this week we have started the process of closing the Silwerstroom site, where only 108 people remain, and the Soetwater site, where 600 people remain.

We have given the people staying in these sites the option of either being assisted with reintegration, returning to their country of origin, or moving to Blue Waters or Harmony Park. Youngsfield will remain open but will not receive additional people.

The City and Province have also agreed that by the end of the month all community halls will be closed.

Again, we will offer those affected a choice between reintegration, returning to their country of origin or going to Blue Waters or Harmony Park.

We have requested several hundred additional family tents from the UN to equip the remaining sites and provide more privacy for the people staying there.

And the Provincial Government is continuing its reintegration programme, with the City's support where necessary.

The full details of this process will be given at a media briefing at 13h00 this afternoon in the Civic Centre.

In consolidating shelter for displaced foreign nationals we are guided by last week's interim ruling of the Constitutional Court on the obligations of the Gauteng Government regarding displaced people.

The Court ruled that government has the right to consolidate safe sites and to take down individual shelters if these individual shelters have been evacuated.

In terms of the ruling, nobody can be forcefully moved from their shelter, unless for the consolidation of a camp or to be taken to a repatriation facility.

And the Court found that displaced people have to co-operate with government officials for "all administrative purposes", and may not canvas or recruit extra people to the shelters.

We understand that the representatives of displaced people and the government have been ordered to seek a way to assist the remaining displaced people with a view to closing the camps by September 30.

In this regard it comes as no surprise that the Treatment Action Campaign has dropped its case against the City of Cape Town and Provincial Government over the safe sites.

They never had a case to begin with, and it is disingenuous for them to claim that their change of heart resulted from the Provincial Government's publication of norms and standards relating to safe sites. The TAC was party to the formulation of these standards from the word go, and knew they were coming.

The City has reserved its right to pursue costs against the TAC for their groundless court action, which has wasted ratepayers' money.

A second important matter for this council's attention is the progress being made with the City's preparations for the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup.

Anyone concerned about the Green Point stadium being a "white elephant" should have been reassured by this week's announcement of a preferred bidder to operate the stadium. The City selected a top-notch team of international and South Africa experts in a consortium of the South African Sail Group and the French Stade de France.

Stade de France is an 80 000 seat stadium, one of the most successful and lucrative facilities of this kind in the world. They have successfully hosted major events, entertainment spectaculars and world level matches in various sports codes.

Sail is the largest sport management company in South Africa, with expertise in event creation, sponsorship, hospitality, event management, rights commercialization and merchandising.  This is just the right combination of international and local expertise and successful track records we were hoping to attract.

We have decided to postpone the awarding of naming rights until the operator is in place with a defined events programme.

A bid for stadium operator and naming rights was received from Investec Bank, but it did not meet the tender requirements. However, let me take this opportunity again to thank Investec, whose initial guarantee of R180 million made it possible for us to proceed at a crucial stage in preparing to build the stadium. They were absolutely correct in their estimation of the future value of this investment.

There are 652 days left until kick-off, and the stadium is on track for completion on 15 December 2009.  We are putting the concrete seating on the last of the three tiers.  By the end of September the main construction work will be finished and sub contractors will move in to complete the specialized work.

The major sub-contract is the high-tech roof, parts of which are now being shipped from the manufacturing plant in Kuwait.

Very specialized technology and expertise, not readily available in South Africa , was needed for this roof from a joint American/German supplier. Next month, we will start erecting the stadium roof.

Our Electricity Services have started installing high voltage underground cables in the CBD and Green Point in preparation for 2010. The 132kV cables will provide increased capacity and security of electricity supply to the area and will also supply power to the stadium. We are sorry about any supply disruptions that the installation has caused.

Apart from infrastructure work, we are also preparing our City's human resources for this event.

To help manage increased traffic, 35 Traffic Officers have been assigned specifically for 2010 and are currently in training. 125 Fire Fighters have been appointed and are in training, 180 new Law Enforcement officers will be appointed by June next year, 52 Disaster Operations Centre staff will be appointed by November 2008, and 107 new Call Centre staff are being appointed.

In addition, orders for the procurement of 9 new Fire Engines have been completed, and by November we are also expecting to take delivery of 13 additional vehicles for Metro Police, 23 for Law Enforcement, and 30 motorbikes for Traffic Services.

When councillors registered this morning, they were given our official Cape Town Host City lapel pins. Speaker, I urge them to wear these pins with pride. They are part of our campaign to build interest and enthusiasm as we draw closer to the big event.

Turning to today's agenda, this council will be asked to consider a number of items that support this Multi-Party Government's core IDP objective of infrastructure-led economic growth.

As we move deeper into a downward economic cycle, with higher interest rates and inflation, and slower economic growth, we need to maintain our focus on encouraging job-creating investment.

We must also focus on preparing our infrastructure to meet the increased demand that is likely to accompany the next upward economic cycle, which economists predict will begin within the next 18 months to two years.

A key item in this regard is today's proposal to approve funding for Phase 1A of a Bus Rapid Transit system for Cape Town.

Council will be asked to support the funding for the total project cost of Phase 1A, which is R1,321 billion, approximately R900 m of which comes from National Government, and R421 million from the City.

These funds will be used to establish bus lanes, procure shuttle buses, improve security and shelter at transport interchanges, and set up IT infrastructure.

The areas to be serviced under Phase 1A in line with our 2010 transport commitments will include an Airport link, the City bowl and the Atlantis Corridor.

We intend to have this completed by March 2010.

Council will also be asked to give in-principle support to the full implementation of Phase 1 (which includes links to the Helderberg, the Northern and Southern Suburbs) and to a further three phases over the next ten years, which will place over 75% of Cape Town's population within 500 metres or less of public transport.

We have some of the best transport minds in the world here in Cape Town to assist us in this landmark project, including Dr Lloyd Wright and the former Mayor of Bogota, Mr Enrique Penalosa.

Speaker, there are few initiatives that sum up the motives behind our IDP better than the Bus Rapid Transit system.

It will simultaneously free up developments throughout our city, allowing for greater economic growth and job creation, and it will improve everyone's access to these opportunities, especially the poor.

In addition to the support of this council, I hope that we will see continued collaboration with the taxi industry, which has everything to gain from getting involved.

In fact, all Capetonians stand to benefit from this project. In other cities where it has been implemented, BRT cuts down private car commuter times too, because it gets public transport ‘out of the way', into its own lanes. But the real purpose is to make public transport safe, convenient, clean and more affordable than private cars.

And as Mr Penalosa remarked in the media this week, reducing the number of cars on the roads is an important part of making a city ‘more humane and friendly'.

Our BRT initiative is based on the principle that infrastructure investment attracts further investment.

But we also need to make Cape Town a cleaner, safer city in order to attract capital and skills.

To this end, Council will be asked today to approve our annual Metro Police Plan.

The plan reflects our new focus on Specialised Law Enforcement, which has brought success in dealing with theft of scrap metal and land invasions, and is beginning to make inroads into drug dealing.

This year's police plan also prioritises increased attention to enforcing the law against so-called petty offences and public nuisances, in line with the ‘broken window' principle. We want to promote respect for the law in Cape Town , and respect among our citizens for each others' rights.

This, in any event, is the focus of municipal police services in terms of the Constitution, while the SAPS should be focusing on serious crime. In this regard I welcome the early successes of the SAPS War Room in the Western Cape . We co-ordinate our efforts. Our success on by-law enforcement is crucial for this so-called ‘high-flyer' policing.

The new recruits to our police services I mentioned earlier will help us to implement our police plan with increased efficiency.

And yesterday we opened a safety and security training centre - a first for the metro - which will help to build skills among new recruits and existing staff.

As you will see in today's agenda, we have also implemented much closer monitoring of the metro police performance in order to address persistent shortfalls in delivery and other problem areas.

These measures will help us to create a cleaner, safer city.

That does not mean we want to turn Cape Town into a nanny state, as one community paper put it last week.

In particular, we need to be wary of creating over-complex and unenforceable laws.

The recently proposed guidelines for perimeter fence heights and barbed wire will be put through extensive public comment and will also be considered in terms of their practicality by all of the relevant portfolio committees.

The same is currently being done with the draft by-laws around dog ownership, which seek to regulate in fine detail the gender of dogs owned.

We clearly have to strike a balance between maintaining an attractive public environment on the one hand, and unnecessarily interfering in the affairs of law-abiding citizens on the other.

Speaker, today's agenda also contains several key reports on the progress we have made over the past year in implementing our key IDP objective of infrastructure-led economic growth.

Although we are a long way from tabling our Annual Report, these early indicators are important for us to note, so that we can give attention to problem areas early in the financial year.

One of the most important indicators of our progress is the Financial Report on the last quarter of 2007/8.

The report reveals that we have again broken our own record for investment in infrastructure projects that benefit the public of Cape Town.

This year we have spent R3.1 billion on infrastructure, or 78% of our Capital Budget.

This is a huge improvement from the average R1 billion invested per year since the formation of the unicity in 2000 up until 2006.

It is also 50% up from the R2 billion invested in capital projects during the previous financial year, which represented a 77% rate of expenditure.

And this year we have spent nearly 95% of our operating budget.

This increase in infrastructure investment is one of the best indicators yet of improved efficiency in the City's overhauled administration.

Much of this also has to do with greater transparency and efficiency in our procurement system, which is the main delivery arm of the City.

This is reflected in a report in today's agenda on the performance of our supply chain management department.

In the financial year that has just ended, 431 tenders were issued and finalised- 24% more than previous financial year.

And the time taken to finalise tenders has been reduced by 15% from the previous year to just over 6.5 weeks.

We have also introduced a new electronic tracking system for all tenders, which will improve efficiency further by giving all City staff access to information on tenders and their status.

To our knowledge, we have also become the first South African local government whose Supply Chain Management Department has qualified for certification under the rigorous ISO 9001 international quality management standards.

We have therefore set a national benchmark for awarding contracts quickly, efficiently and transparently.

The importance of this can be illustrated with reference to the current problems around the sale of land in Table Bay by Transnet and the Provincial Government.

Whether or not we ever get to the bottom of this matter, the Cape Chamber of Commerce raised a fair point at last week's ‘business meets province' session when it asked why Province does not open its tender committees to the public in the same way as the City has.

This is one way to ensure that corrupt awarding of tenders is stamped out once and for all.

In addition to our financial indicators, a final performance review for the City during 2007/8 is also before council today.

It also shows progress in several areas regarding our strategic objective of promoting economic growth.

In particular, direct investment in Cape Town grew R1.67 billion in the period under review, exceeding our target of R1.6 billion.

10 177 job opportunities were created, exceeding our target of 9 500.

We also created 12 500 jobs through the Expanded Public Works Programme, a target we met by stamping out cronyism and patronage networks.

And we have exceeded our targets for cleanliness in the public environment and maintenance of parks.

While focusing on factors that promote economic growth and reduction of poverty through job creation, we are also making headway in extending opportunities and access to services to the poor communities of Cape Town.

We have met or exceeded all of our targets for the provision of basic services.

We have exceeded our target of providing essential services to the top 50 informal settlements on our list of 222 by the end of 2007/8.

We have met our targets for reducing infant mortality, HIV/AIDS infections and TB infections.

We have assisted 450 street people through partnerships with shelters, and established 20 local drug action committees, where we had a target of 8.

Of course, some crucial targets have not been met.

The reconfiguration of the Green Point Common in preparation for 2010 is still behind schedule, the result of a delayed Record of Decision from the MEC.

We have also fallen short of our target for delivering housing opportunities, providing 6 500, which is about 700 less than last year.

Although this is still double the average for the previous 5 years, the scale of our housing crisis requires us to do much more.

A number of steps have been taken in the housing department to address this, including rapid procurement of land and filling of vacant posts, and I am told we can expect a significant improvement in the year ahead.

In the interim, we are introducing other measures to assist with access to housing, including a proposed increase to the upper limit for those who qualify for the Public Housing indigent grant.

In the past, households with a monthly income below R1880 received this support.

Today we propose to make it available to households with a monthly income of up to R2880.

We are also proposing an increase the upper limit for those who qualify for GAP housing from a previous monthly household income of R7000 to R10 000.

Finally, our report indicates deteriorating water quality in the city's rivers and wetlands. In many cases water tests revealed ecoli and faecal coliform counts that exceed acceptable limits.

This is largely due to rapid urban growth and decades of underinvestment in infrastructure.

We are urgently addressing this with R280 million allocated for new wastewater treatment works in the current financial year, and similarly increased allocations for stormwater management in informal areas.

There are a number of other areas that need attention in our Performance Review, but these are some of the most critical.

I hope that some of the successes and positive results will keep our councillors and officials motivated to address these challenges.

We still have much work to do.

Speaker, I would like to finish by wishing all of our Muslim councillors, staff and their families Ramadaan Mubarak for next week.

I hope that the holy month of fasting strengthens your faith and your commitment to serving your communities.

We can all draw inspiration from your example of discipline and steadfast commitment.

I thank you.

This is the prepared text of the speech by Helen Zille, Mayor of Cape Town, to the full council meeting, Council Chamber, Cape Town Civic Centre, August 27 2008

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