ADDRESS BY THE EXECUTIVE MAYOR OF CAPE TOWN, ALDERMAN PATRICIA DE LILLE, TO THE CAPE TOWN PRESS CLUB ON 13 JUNE 2012

 Reflections on my administration's first year in office

Good morning, goeiedag, molweni,

I would like to thank you all for welcoming me here to address you today. It is always an honour to appear before the club and share the perspectives of members, from whatever section of society they may represent, from colleagues in government, to members of civil society, business leaders and of course, our friends in the press.

I believe that this press club, with its rich history, is one of the many assets that truly add to the rich texture of this city and make Cape Town special. Having said that let me also say that I am humbled to be here today.

Though I have addressed you before as an opposition leader and from the campaign trail, this is my first time speaking to you as leader of a government. What is humbling about it is the natural hesitation a person, especially a politician, has to review themselves, openly and honestly, in a public forum, away from party slogans.

It requires a great deal of introspection and self-examination. However, these are qualities I believe all governments should have in order to ensure that they are delivering on their mandate and providing for citizens and partnering with them to access opportunities.

This is all part of a new culture of critical monitoring and evaluation our administration has made a cornerstone of the City of Cape Town. We came into office with a basic platform of building the City on five pillars: the Opportunity City; the Safe City; the Caring City; the Inclusive City; and the Well-run City.

These pillars were to provide strategic focus areas for our efforts to create the economic enabling environment in which jobs could be created and opportunities could grow and where those who needed help would receive it. And we chose numerous delivery arms to achieve these ends, such as initiating a policy review that aims to help us achieve a more lasting reconciliation through direct and indirect redress measures.

In so doing, we would improve delivery and make Cape Town a place that rightfully celebrates its diversity. These are bold political gestures and they have required the necessary actions and structures to back them up.

So we rearranged City Directorates, creating the Directorate of Tourism, Events and Marketing and the Directorate of Environmental, Economic and Spatial Planning, and the Directorate of Social Development and Early Childhood Development.

We have created a political and administrative team, the most diverse in the City's history, that combines a range of skill-sets and expertise. Council meetings, and other committee meetings, have been made more frequent to speed up decision-making.

And perhaps most significantly, we have invested resources over the past year to ensure that we have a consolidated strategy that will inform everything we do, across all layers of our administration. I refer to the Integrated Development Plan, the IDP, which stands as the living organisational structure that gives life to our electoral mandate.

It is supported by a new Transversal Management System for the City and our newly formed Strategic Policy Unit, which is in the process of conducting a strategic policy review of the City as well as putting in place revised mechanisms of monitoring and evaluation. And we have reached out to business by making them our strategic partners in the Economic Development Partnership (EDP), a dynamic, private-sector led body of combined business and marketing intelligence that will help us map effective economic strategies for the whole city-region.

These are significant advances for the City. They are a demonstration of the kind of change possible when one truly believes in investing in the best models of management and modern government. But part of our belief in these systems stems from the fact that we work with them and in them as part of our daily lives.

For ordinary people, the reassurance of systems being put in place does not mean much when there are still outstanding service delivery issues. So let me speak to the tangible products of these government practices.

We have resolved the issue of the Makhaza toilets; improved service delivery in Hangberg; actively changed the city's landscape with our renaming policy, renaming major roads after figures such as Nelson Mandela, Helen Suzman, and Christiaan Barnard; been named the World Design Capital for 2014; hosted a successful Tweede Nuwe Jaar; had Table Mountain named as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World; maintained our AA credit rating from Moody's; we have been awarded our eighth consecutive unqualified audit; and we have been awarded a whole host of accolades from around the world in the past year, 44 at the last count as available on the City's website.

Furthermore, our policy agenda has included a special focus on redress and reconciliation. In that regard, we have already sold City land under market value to assist with a contentious land claim in Claremont and undertaken to facilitate similar processes.

We have initiated a policy first for South Africa by providing water, sanitation and electricity to backyarders on Council-owned property. We have created 34 000 job opportunities through 228 projects in the City's Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), in the process fully accessing all incentives from the national government, to the value of R19,2 million. And further in terms of redress, we have assigned an additional R10 million in this year's budget to the poorest wards in the city.

In all, we have passed a budget over R30 billion, spending more on capital projects than Johannesburg in both absolute and relative terms. That type of spending is leading to major investments that will truly transform this city, including in transport infrastructure where the MyCiti service will be rolled-out to the South-East of the City, including Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain, by the end of next year and a broadband network that will link the whole metro and change the way people communicate.

This is in addition to the R1,2 billion in relief we provide for the poor through our indigent policy proving that, in total, our budgeting and governing approach is pro growth, pro poor and pro jobs. So I believe that we are making progress.

I believe that we are actively living up to the constitutional imperative of being the drivers of social and economic development as local government. But we still face challenges. To be honest with you, and with ourselves, we know that there are obstacles we still need to overcome to live up to our potential.

We need to improve the monitoring of service provision in informal settlements. We have experienced some service delivery protests in the past year. Some of them were political agitations while others were based on legitimate concerns. We will always, however, listen to the concerns of communities and engage with them.

I believe that we have done this most powerfully recently through the Enkanini electrification process. This process, in three phases and costing millions of Rands will provide power to people who never had it before.

The first phase will cost R8 million, the second phase R27 million and the third and final phase will cost R54 million. We have to find the right balance between delivering service delivery outcomes and complying with the Auditor General.

We have to find a way of influencing the decisions of State-Owned Enterprises in Cape Town so that we have some say in all major economic factors in the city. And we need to constantly revise our strategies in the face of numerous challenges, most especially increased urbanisation.

In conclusion, the work of government isn't easy. But it is a challenge undertaken for our citizens to ensure that everyone benefits from this democracy. It requires partners. It requires a vision. But most of all, it requires honesty.

Thank you.

Issued by the City of Cape Town, June 13 2012

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