SPEECH BY THE CITY'S EXECUTIVE MAYOR, PATRICIA DE LILLE, AT THE FULL COUNCIL MEETING ON 20 AUGUST 2014

Good morning, goeie môre, molweni, as-salaam alaikum, shalom.

May I please ask for a moment's silence for all those who have died in the recent conflicts in the Middle East.

Thank you.

I hope that all parties can work together to find peaceful solutions that stop the loss of life on all sides.

Mr Speaker,

At this sitting, we are called upon to consider an adjustment budget for the 2014/2015 financial year.

In terms of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), such budgets help councils to accommodate revised programme figures and, where appropriate, roll-overs.

This is good budget practice and fully compliant with the law.

This City, which is committed to the pillar of being well-run, has prioritised good governance and best practice.

Indeed, it is one of the reasons why the City received a clean audit from the Auditor-General recently.

Good governance means being compliant with legislation and regulations.

But it also means improving the way we work in order to produce better outcomes for the public.

Many people might regard the combination of the ‘public sector' and ‘innovation' as a contradiction in terms.

The public sector, which comprises governments and their agencies, is usually associated with bureaucracy and an uncompromising commitment to process.

Now, having said that, we should not regard these things as inherently bad.

Governments act on behalf of the people for the public good and use public funds.

This means that we have to ensure that we have strict rules and regulations which ensure that we act with integrity and maximum transparency.

Bureaucracy and process are therefore about protecting the institutions of public power and preventing them from being abused by individuals.

But our commitment to what are good practices of governance in the public sector should not prevent us from being innovative in performing our duties and executing our mandates.

The spark of creativity is not the preserve of the private sector alone.

Indeed, innovation and creativity can become the tools of public sector bodies that embrace the principles of design.

This creates an understanding that we can achieve a great deal, and within the prescripts of regulation, if we apply our minds.

This year, 20 years of our democracy, Cape Town is the World Design Capital.

Across the city, various industries are applying themselves to use the principles of design to transform the way we live and indeed transform this city.

As a city government, we set ourselves the task of being innovative and creative.

Our innovation has been enshrined in the Mayor's Portfolio on Urban Sustainability, where we highlighted a batch of projects that have used design excellence in addressing service delivery needs.

This portfolio underscores our commitment to creativity and I urge you all to familiarise yourselves with it - copies of which are freely available.

We have combined the goal to innovate with our commitment to becoming a more sustainable city, especially in terms of our energy usage and electricity networks.

The City of Cape Town has been at the forefront of green initiatives as part of our commitment to creating a sustainable city and one that addresses the challenges facing our environment.

The City has set itself a target of sourcing 10% of its electricity from renewable energy resources by 2020 and the roll-out of the small-scale embedded generation tariff supports this goal.

In a pilot project, a small number of residential, industrial and commercial consumers have already connected rooftop photovoltaic (PV) generation to the City's electricity grid.

However, conventional metering installations do not allow for a two-way flow of electricity and the City has been running a project in search of a solution allowing consumers to feed power back into the grid and to receive an off-set doing so.

The implementation of the small-scale embedded generation (SSEG) tariffs will make it legally possible to feed electrical power back into the municipal grid.

Consumers who wish to feed SSEG generated electricity into the municipal electricity grid will be required to have a bi-directional advanced meter infrastructure (AMI) credit meter installed by the City at their own cost and take their electricity supply at the appropriate SSEG tariff.

The City's Electricity Services Department is finalising the outstanding items which will enable the City to provide residents and businesses with an off-set for feeding power back into the municipal grid.

For the City of Cape Town, it enables us to get closer to our target of sourcing 10% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020, thus reducing our carbon footprint.

We are also leveraging our assets to drive social and economic growth in the city.

For the past few years, our Property Management Department has been developing a register of our assets and understanding the portfolio at our disposal.

After rigid classification and profiling exercises, the City will begin disposing of some of our assets, including land, this October.

We will be putting 15 pieces of land for commercial and mixed use on the market in line with our legal asset transfer regulations.

These pieces of land will provide opportunities for developers to use some of the City's land and assets to drive new developments, while also creating a revenue stream for the City as well as creating jobs.

We will also be giving notice of a further 50 properties that we will be taking to the market in coming months.

This is a demonstration of how we are using the public property we are entrusted with to create value for the public as enshrined in our Integrated Development Plan, page 72, where we commit to leverage our assets to help the city's poor.

These are just some of the ways in which we are future-proofing this city and making it a competitive centre for the 21st Century.

Mr Speaker, unfortunately, not everyone has the same aspirations for Cape Town.

This government wants economic and social development; it wants progress; and it wants a city that belongs to everyone.

But some so-called leaders want none of these things.

Where we would have development, they would have destruction.

Where we would have progress, they would have regression.

And where we would want this city to belong to everyone, they would have a city divided and at war with itself.

These enemies of the future have found a home in the ANC-front organisation Ses'Khona.

Led by current and former councilors of the ANC, Ses'Khona has made it its business to create human misery from which to profit.

In recent days, we have seen an unprecedented land invasion on privately owned land in Philippi East.

Our law enforcement officials, assisted by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Metro Police, have been working to dismantle unoccupied structures erected during the invasion.

The City will continue to uphold the values contained in the Constitution. This includes respect for the dignity of all, compliance with the rule of law at all times, and preventing queue-jumping by those who illegally invade land. 

We must continue to protect a fair and systematic housing delivery process.

The City has been vindicated by the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court that its actions in protecting private property from land invaders is compliant with its constitutional obligations.

The City will continue the implementation of its housing and service delivery programmes.

But these invasions must be considered part of a general trend to invade both public and private land across Cape Town as part of a politically motivated campaign to make the city ungovernable.

These claims are based on evidence showing the involvement of Ses'Khona leaders.

We have footage of them inciting the crowd in Philippi East and urging them to block the road and attack the police.

As such, they are responsible for any conflict that results from the tensions between the land invaders and the police.

And what is more, they are responsible for the conditions that arise in settlements that are the result of invasions.

These include poor access to City services, continual flooding, high crime rates and poor connections with economic opportunities.

But these realities mean nothing to Ses'Khona.

Their leaders have been getting people to pay R25 to become members, selling them plots for R4 000 and selling jobs with Metrorail for R25 each - jobs which did not exist.

I have urged those people who have been tricked by Ses'Khona leaders, who use these funds to buy new cars for themselves, to open criminal charges with the police.

These are the actions of parasites that, in true ANC fashion, put their own selfish needs before the greater good.

This kind of behavior has been on display in the recent actions of the National Minister of Human Settlements, Lindiwe Sisulu.

The National Department of Human Settlements is supposed to release the Municipal Human Settlements Capacity Grant (MHSCG) to municipalities at the beginning of their financial year so that this grant funding can be used to roll out projects.

Indeed, of all the things that can bring any project to a screeching halt, whether in the public or private sector, an interruption of cash flow is the most serious.

Last month, the department decided not to release our funds as prescribed by legislation in the form of the Division of Revenue Act (DORA).

Against all protocol and procedure, and completely against the spirit of intergovernmental relations, the department did not seek to consult us, nor did it consult the National Treasury.

The City complained to the National Treasury, which then took action.

Based on this, a response letter sent to the Director-General of Human Settlements by the National Treasury is telling in this regard. The letter, dated 22 July 2014, says:

‘The National Treasury is therefore deeply concerned about the frequent violation of the DORA legal requirements (by the Department of Human Settlements) and the total disregard by your department for our legislation framework as enacted by Parliament. [...] If this reoccurs one more time, the National Treasury will have no option/choice but to report your department formally to Parliament as well as to the Office of the Auditor-General. In addition, we will institute our own measures in terms of Section 81 of the PFMA [Public Finance Management Act].'

Since that time, the minister has claimed that she was perfectly within her rights in terms of MINMEC decisions.

Once again, she wilfully misunderstands the structures of the law.

MINMEC is not a decision-making structure and she acted outside of the prescripts of DORA and the PFMA.

Most of those MECs in MINMEC are concerned with their supposed loss of power and political relevance once housing assignment occurs and not with the best interests of service delivery.

I know that Minister Sisulu has been shuttled around from department to department these last five years, but let me appeal to her to get up to date with housing legislation and consider her duty as a minister to serve public interests - not political ones.

Mr Speaker, in conclusion, the City of Cape Town is blazing a trail of innovation and dedication to public service.

Every year, we become more creative and more innovative in giving life to the historic mandate given to us by the people of this city.

It is true that we are being assailed on many fronts by those who do not have the foresight to see beyond their narrow political agendas.

But we know that with the majority of residents and the law on our side, we can overcome these odds and make progress possible, together.

Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi.

Issued by the City of Cape Town, August 20 2014

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