SPEECH BY THE CITY'S EXECUTIVE MAYOR, PATRICIA DE LILLE, AT THE FULL COUNCIL MEETING ON 3 DECEMBER
Good morning, goeie dag, molweni, as-salaam alaikum, shalom.
Mr Speaker,
It is now almost one year since we lost former president Mandela, Tata Madiba.
We celebrated his legacy in Cape Town during his lifetime.
And we continue to celebrate it in our approach to government and to each other.
In 1997 Madiba received the Freedom of the City of Cape Town, and on that occasion he said, and I quote:
‘In Cape Town resides part of the souls of many nations and cultures, priceless threads in the rich diversity of our African nation. This legacy of our history is both a strength and a challenge'.
End quote.
We will confront the challenges of our past in shaping our future by being guided by the example that Madiba set for us.
There seems to be an air of goodwill in the Council Chamber today.
Everyone seems to be in a good mood.
I think it must have something to do with the fact that this is the last Council meeting of the year.
You will have noticed that as you arrived here this morning, we didn't have riot police stationed outside.
This is not the National Parliament.
The people of Cape Town can rely on us to conclude our business one way or the other as we have demonstrated time and again this year.
And this has been a significant year for us, not only in the City but in the country.
This year we celebrated our status as the World Design Capital and placed design and innovation firmly on the agenda.
As the challenges we face grow larger in scale, including urbanisation and ever-present resource constraints, we have to think creatively about our response.
This led to substantial introspection as an organisation as we interrogated the way we did our business and the outcomes we were working towards.
I think we have established a model of best practice with the Mayor's Portfolio on Urban Sustainability, which was launched this year.
It will help inform us how we translate the positive experiences of dynamic thinking into operational excellence across departments in the future.
And more broadly speaking, the status as the World Design Capital has helped us build the foundation for becoming the creative capital of the region.
As the knowledge economy grows more sophisticated, competitive advantage will be defined by those cities that have the proven capability to work and think creatively.
Such capability may be sector objectives in themselves, such as for the ever-growing film and fashion industries, or they may be in supporting roles for the expansion of other sectors, such as tertiary financial services or business process outsourcing.
Indeed, the span of creativity across platforms acts as an enabler for economic growth and a distinguishing factor for niche competition that separates us from manufacturing centres like Johannesburg or logistics centres like Durban.
That is why we complemented the investment in the World Design Capital with practical investments in the tools that make creative enablers possible.
One of these is the investment we have poured into our digital infrastructure.
Becoming a truly digital city is one of the game-changers that will help unlock growth.
That is what has led to our extensive investments in broadband.
By the end of June 2015, free Wi-Fi will be provided at 61 City buildings across the metro.
Wi-Fi will be provided both inside public buildings, via our 102 SmartCape computer facilities, and externally via 61 public access hotspots in areas where members of the public congregate and queue for services.
These external public amenities include clinics, administration buildings, traffic departments, fire stations and public transport interchanges in areas such as Langa, Nyanga, Uitsig, Valhalla Park, Athlone and Atlantis.
This City is proud to announce that it has also partnered with three commercial service providers to expand internet connectivity to previously disadvantaged communities throughout the metro. These service providers are MWEB, Internet Solutions, and Orange.
This digital inclusion project forms part of our overarching objective of becoming the first truly digital city in Africa.
Our brand new Wi-Fi provision has been made possible by the City's investment in broadband fibre optic networks, in line with our Universal Broadband Network Strategy, which is geared towards rolling out broadband infrastructure throughout the metro.
This forms part of the City's R1,3 billion programme to complete the roll-out over the next seven years.
In doing so, we will realise our vision of facilitating access to high-speed internet in order to support economic development and expand opportunities to our residents.
Our investment in the digital city is one of the biggest contributions we can make towards building the opportunity city of the future.
Mr Speaker, this year of course also marked the 20thanniversary of democracy in South Africa.
With the passing of former president Mandela, Tata Madiba, last year, the country has had time to reflect and focus on the meaning of our quiet revolution.
There have been points of contention and points of disagreement as there should be in the free market of ideas.
But there has been general agreement on what we set out to achieve as the new South Africa.
So let us say that there were a few imperatives: the need to make things better than they were before; to promote upliftment through socio-economic opportunities, especially for those who were denied them in the past; and to create a society where an individual can access opportunity, be at liberty and make a better life for her or himself.
There was general agreement that all people should be able to live free and without discrimination and that substantive help should be given to enable those who come from disadvantaged conditions to access freedom.
It is a project of social justice that seeks to make dignity for the individual a reality.
These are ambitious goals, to be sure.
Indeed, they can only be served with total commitment, complete transparency, and selfless leadership that believes in doing all it can to make the future we hope for a reality.
We have achieved a great deal in the past two decades.
But we cannot let the hope of the future we dreamed of in 1994 be seized by setting our sights and our dreams lower.
I think that as we have celebrated 20 years of freedom, we have kept the hope of 1994 alive here in Cape Town.
We enshrined the hope of reconciliation and redress in two of our governance pillars: to be a caring and inclusive city.
We have invested heavily in programmes of redressing the wrongs of the past by providing the most expansive cross-subsidisation of the poor in the country and focusing on socially transformative projects.
These have included the historic roll-out of the MyCiTi network, the repaving of roads in former townships, and the retrofitting of ceilings for homes built without them.
But one achievement I am especially proud of this year is the roll-out of our electrification programme for informal settlements.
In total for 2014 thus far, areas directly supplied by the City have seen 3 645 electricity connections installed at a value of R13 million.
The remainder of the financial year will see a further 5 218 connections installed for City supply areas at a cost of R19,8 million.
In terms of Eskom supply areas, for which the City has provided the funding for electrification, we have installed 6 682 connections at a cost of R51 million thus far.
The remainder of the financial year will see a further 1 000 connections installed at a cost of R10,7 million.
This means that, in total, 16 545 connections will have been installed in the 2014/2015 financial year at a value of nearly R100 million.
These projects of delivering core basic services speak directly to the City's mandate and to our ability to change people's lives in the most fundamental way.
This is an achievement of which we should rightly be proud and which should motivate us to increase the momentum to drive this positive change to all areas that need it.
In that regard Mr Speaker, the drive to transform the city is not served by those advancing narrow political agendas for selfish reasons.
I am thinking specifically of those within the Tokolos Stencil Collective who express their courageous political activism by working anonymously - faceless and nameless cowards.
They have littered the city with slogans trying to paint the City as uncaring of the poor and somehow responsible for the South African Police Service's massacre at Marikana.
I challenge these would-be heroes to come forward and show themselves so that they can be held accountable for their lies and defamation and so their false claims can be tested in court
They are causing hundreds of thousands of rands worth of damage with vandalism.
Money spent on repairs - and this does not include the damage to private property that residents have had to repair - could have been better spent on services for the poor.
This adds to a vandalism bill of nearly R30 million this year - money which has been diverted from its original purpose, not to mention the time that staff members have to allocate to fixing what vandals have destroyed.
Mr Speaker, I am proud to announce that the City of Cape Town will be the first to claim damages from construction companies involved in bid rigging in respect of the construction of the Cape Town Stadium, which was opened in 2010.
Bid rigging is the most serious contravention of the Competition Act and is designed to subvert competitive tender processes, leading to increased costs.
I have instructed the City's attorneys to issue summons for the recovery of the damages suffered and they will be attending to the formalities over the next few days.
The City's claim amounts to some R400 million.
The damages suffered were at the expense of the public whose rights we are duty bound to protect.
We will do so vigorously.
Mr Speaker, in conclusion, I would like to wish the councillors a restful end of year, but remind them that the demands of public service know no holidays and no boundaries and our duty is to work in the interests of the public whenever required.
I also would like to urge the people of Cape Town to exercise caution and be safe during the festive season, and behave responsibly for the sake of themselves and their families.
Let's take some time to reflect on the achievements of the year that was and focus on the challenges that lie before us in the year ahead.
Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.
Issued by the City of Cape Town, December 3 2014
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
