Election 2011: Just imagine where we can take Johannesburg

Note to editors: the following discussion document was presented at a DA press conference held today in Johannesburg, presented by DA mayoral candidate in the City of Johannesburg Mmusi Maimane, DA chairperson Dr Wilmot James MP and DA Mayor of Midvaal Local Municipality Timothy Nast.

Eighteen months ago, the editor of a major South African daily newspaper wrote:

"I have just spent a week in Cape Town, the first extended period I have spent there for years. I tell you, the place is sparkling. There's no dirt on the streets, people look sharp and the Green Point soccer stadium for next year is just gorgeous. In comparison, Johannesburg is filthy and broken. Drive past Zoo Lake on a Monday morning for a real shock. Every time I remarked on what I saw of Cape Town the response was the same - the Democratic Alliance city and provincial administrations in Cape Town and Western Cape are working. As most ANC-run cities broadly subside and most DA-run ones broadly prosper, the political effect becomes a little like compound interest. You don't notice it at first but after a while it really begins to matter. A lot. It's about doing your job - everyone doing their jobs - properly."

This captures the quintessential difference between the City of Johannesburg, after years of ANC mismanagement, and five years of DA governance in City of Cape Town. It highlights how the DA has proven to be a credible alternative to inefficient, wasteful and corrupt government, how the DA champions service delivery excellence, and how the results of better governance are there for all to see.

In the next 10 days I will be releasing my manifesto for the City of Johannesburg. This will be the founding document on which our entire campaign, and programme of governance, is built. It will detail the specific interventions, policy programmes and principles that I hope to bring to the City of Johannesburg administration after May 18th. Today, we are providing a different type of analysis - a discussion document that looks comparatively at the performance of the Johannesburg and Cape Town administrations, and attempts to map out what a DA administration would mean for the people of Johannesburg over the next few years.

In short, today we are saying: Look at how far we have taken Cape Town in five years - and imagine what Johannesburg can look like, under a DA government, five years from now.

Our discussion document consists of four separate snapshots of how the DA has performed in the City of Cape Town, and how we can bring similar pro-poor, pro-jobs prosperity to Johannesburg. The document also looks at the experience we have gained from running Midvaal Local Municipality in southern Gauteng, which has rapidly become this province's best performing municipality in recent years.

The four snapshots detailed below look at quality of life, financial management, service delivery and infrastructure delivery.

Overview

If we compare the DA's record in the City of Cape Town to the ANC's in Johannesburg, we see two cities that share a common history, but appear to be on very different trajectories. Since 2006, when the DA took over from the ANC in Cape Town, the City has steadily improved across all metrics of service delivery and governance. Today it sets the standard of excellence for all metros in each of these areas. In contrast, Johannesburg has been gradually declining through weak service delivery, lowered quality of life, shambolic finances and crumbling infrastructure. This decline has now become quite apparent in everyday life in the City.

The accessibility of better services for all is essential if the quality of life of Johannesburg residents is to be improved. Access to basic services helps to create an environment of opportunity and greater economic freedom, which can only strengthen our democracy.

In providing access to quality services for all, building strong institutions, and transforming the City administration from one based on cronyism to one based on transparency and delivery, the City of Cape Town has created such an environment for all who live there.

The ANC's failure to establish sound institutions and effective administrations has fundamentally undermined its ability to govern effectively and, therefore, deliver. The key principles on which the ANC is built- democratic centralism and cadre deployment- are the antithesis to the accountability that should underpin sound governance. To change its record of poor delivery, the ANC would therefore have to reject the very principles on which it is based.

Today, we want to share the facts regarding the difference between quality of life, financial management, the delivery of services and the provision of infrastructure under DA and ANC administrations. We aim to show how a DA governed City of Johannesburg would bring jobs, efficient municipal services and world-class infrastructure to this City over the next five years.

Quality of Life

For far too many residents of Johannesburg, quality of life is unsatisfactory. A TNS research survey, which polled 2 000 people across the country's main metropolitan areas late last year, found only four in ten (43%) of the City's residents felt satisfied with the standards of service delivery they received.

As South Africa's largest city, the home of our Stock Exchange and many of our largest and most successful companies and organisations, Johannesburg should be an oasis of opportunity for South Africans. It should be a centre of growth, development and prosperity.

Five years after electing the DA into government in the City of Cape Town, with only 42% of the vote, 57% of residents are now happy with service delivery in the City, and 39% are not - the highest rate of satisfaction, and lowest rate of dissatisfaction, of any City recorded in the TNS survey, by a wide margin.

This is not a perfect score, to be sure. But in the face of enormous service delivery backlogs inherited in Cape Town in 2006, it is a sign of steady progress - progress that is acknowledged not just by those who voted for the DA in 2006, but also by a growing number of those residents of the City who did not.

Indeed, the TNS survey, when placed in the context of electoral performance in 2006, shows increasing faith in the DA's metro amongst the electorate, and decreasing faith in ANC administrations. The chart below shows how, in metros won by the ANC in 2006, a far smaller percent of the electorate is satisfied with the ANC's performance on service delivery, than voted for the party five years ago. On the other hand, a much larger portion of Cape Town residents endorse the DA's performance in service delivery, than voted for the party five years ago.

An important sign of service delivery progress is when opposition voters endorse your performance; likewise, a sign of serious delivery breakdown is when one's own supporters repudiate your performance.

Similar progress is in evidence in the DA's Midvaal administration in Gauteng. Midvaal was ranked as the province's top municipality for quality of life by the Gauteng Planning Commission's Quality of Life Survey last year. The survey showed that, by almost every indicator available, Midvaal residents experience better living conditions and governance than residents living in ANC municipalities. It has the highest satisfaction rating for any Gauteng municipality and is the only municipality in the province whose residents express more confidence in local government than in the provincial and national governments. It is also the only municipality in the province where the majority of residents are either satisfied or very satisfied with local government.

In five years, the DA can help to bring the improvements in quality of life to Johannesburg that we are steadily bringing to Cape Town and Midvaal.

Financial Management

Part of the ultimate reason for the public's satisfaction with DA administrations stems from our record of financial management. The City of Cape Town has received a clean sweep of unqualified audits, every year since we were elected in 2006. The City's credit rating was upgraded to double-A status for the first time, just nine months into Helen Zille's first term as Cape Town mayor, and we have maintained our Aa2.za rating for the fifth consecutive year, with Moody's International credit rating agency saying this reflects the "sound financial management" and "prudent policy strategies" of the City's DA administration.

Audit reports and credit ratings are the two essential indicators of sound financial governance. The former indicates that an administration is running efficiently, without incurring wasteful expenditure, and without engaging in acts of corruption and maladministration. This then provides the basis for better delivery of local services and infrastructure. The latter - credit ratings - are the essential ingredient of upward mobility and economic development, because they tell companies whether to invest in a region. This has profound knock-on implications for job creation.

Compare all of this to Johannesburg. The City is on the verge of receiving a qualified audit as a consequence of its billing chaos, since the Auditor-General has rejected financial statements from both Joburg Water and from City Power. The audit, which was due for completion in December, and should have been tabled at the end of January, remains on indefinite hold. Should Johannesburg receive a qualified audit, this would likely affect its already-downgraded credit rating, which will hamper its ability to attract investment, raise money and pay back R15 billion in long-term loans. Moreover, the National Treasury recently stated that the city's debt was growing at a faster rate than any other metro - at 23,5% or R2 billion a year. This will affect the City's growth prospects and ability to deliver services.

The current billing crisis also suggests that Johannesburg has lost its ability to effectively deal with its residents. Its computerised billing system has virtually collapsed, creating chaos for ratepayers who receive faulty - usually inflated - bills or no bills at all. The City has cut off water and electricity to 40 000 residents due to its own miscalculations. Despite residents' outrage, city leadership appears clueless about how to solve the crisis, proclaiming that there's no problem. Hence the city's finances are in disarray as it cannot determine its own income.

Just down the road, the DA has provided a decade of good government and sound financial management to Gauteng's own Midvaal municipality which received an eighth unqualified audit recently, for the 2009/2010 financial year. This fiscal responsibility has allowed the DA administration in Midvaal to facilitate Gauteng's fastest-growing local economy. Midvaal not only has a high quality of life but the lowest unemployment rate in the province. It has drawn in major investors and employers such as Heineken and Ferrero Rocher, providing stable economic growth and job opportunities for local residents. The DA's good clean government has attracted investors who create jobs.

By the broad definition of unemployment, according to Statistics South Africa's Quarterly Labour Force survey, just fewer than one in four residents of the Western Cape (24.9%) is unable to find work - far beneath the national unemployment rate of 33%. In Johannesburg, the Gauteng Planning Commission measured a 41% unemployment rate, compared to DA-run Midvaal, where unemployment stands at 26%.

Over the next five years, we can bring Cape Town and Midvaal's record of growth, investment and job creation to the City of Johannesburg.

Service Delivery

It is important to consider that local government is responsible for implementing service delivery, and is the face of accessible government for most people. It is arguably the most important sphere of government, especially for those at the bottom end of the economic ladder, who rely on local administrations to deliver those essential components of opportunity - basic services, like water, electricity and sanitation.

So which party is fulfilling its service delivery promises?

According to the Universal Household Access to Basic Services (UHABS) report - compiled by the National Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs last year - the DA-run City of Cape Town is the best performing metro in the country in every service delivery metric. The report uses metrics from four basic service delivery areas: water, sanitation, refuse collection and electricity. For each, it provides the percentage of households in the municipality that have access to a basic level of that particular service.

The report shows that the City of Cape Town is comprehensively outperforming other ANC-run metros in each of the four areas that were reviewed, including Johannesburg.

Overall, 91% of residents of Cape Town have access to all four areas of basic service delivery reviewed in the report. The report shows that 100% of Cape Town residents have access to basic water, 98% to refuse removal, 95% to electricity provision and 94% to basic sanitation, under the DA's administration.

The City of Johannesburg and other ANC metros lag behind.

Although Cape Town's record is not perfect, the data shows we are doing far more to deliver basic services for the poor than any ANC metro.

The DA's approach to delivery actively prioritises the needs of the currently disadvantaged. For instance, residents registered on the City's indigent database receive 350 litres per day for free, which is the highest free allocation of water in the country. Any water not used on a given day can be carried over to the next day. Residents who have not registered on the database, but who nonetheless run into arrears in payments, are never cut off under the City's "water-flow system", and the City's SMS line, and 24-hour emergency call centre line, help residents experiencing water and sanitation problems.

The fundamental inability of other ANC-run cities to provide some or most of these four basic services compromises their ability to help the poor prosper.

In the next five years, a DA-run City of Johannesburg can move rapidly towards the service delivery benchmarks set by our administration in the City of Cape Town.

Infrastructure 

Residents of Johannesburg have come to accept service failure as an ordinary part of life. Johannesburg's billing system is in chaos, street and traffic lights do not work, potholes have become a general menace to motorists, the overburdened water and sewerage systems are crumbling, a predatory metro police force lacks the leadership it requires, and the fiscus was so poorly administered that the Province was planning on charging a toll on drivers who use the N1 highway, a publicly funded road.

DA administrations work differently, and over the next five years, the City of Johannesburg can too.

Over the last five years, the DA's Cape Town administration has attended to its aging infrastructure by upgrading or replacing it. Old sewer lines are replaced before becoming a problem, roads are tarred and painted frequently, and street and traffic light outages are attended to as a matter of priority. These unglamorous aspects of day-to-day delivery add up to a sustainable and high quality of life for city residents. It is based on the recognition that continuous investment and maintenance of bulk infrastructure provides a platform for residents and businesses to grow and prosper. Without it, they are bogged down by all the inefficiencies that Johannesburg residents have sadly gotten used to. Over time, the infrastructure backlogs pile up and threaten to stifle the potential of city residents.

In five years, we can turn around the City of Johannesburg, using the same model of good governance and delivery efficiency we have used in Cape Town.

Conclusion

The ANC has run out of ideas for how to move Johannesburg forward. The party seems set to endorse Parks Tau as its mayoral candidate, the very person who oversaw the city's ongoing billing fiasco as Johannesburg's head of finance. The inability of Mr Tau's finance operation to correctly bill residents left many without water and electricity connections after the metro illegally disconnected them. This choice by the ANC is cynical and insulting. The people of Johannesburg deserve an administration which will turn the city around and actually deliver services for all, not give them more of the same.

Of particular concern in the City of Johannesburg is the disproportionate burden being placed on poor communities, who are most reliant on the basic services the local government is supposed to provide, by the City's failing administration. These communities are placed at a further disadvantage as they cannot afford to access equivalent services offered by the private sector. What Johannesburg's ANC-run administration has effectively done is to perpetuate the "unfreedoms" experienced by poor residents - instead of creating an environment, like that in Cape Town, which offers more and more residents the opportunity to each fulfil their own potential.

As long as Johannesburg is run by a party that places no value on transparency or accountability, this situation will continue to worsen. Now is the time for voters to exercise their democratic prerogative, by using their vote and facilitating a shift to a party that regards a well-run administration as the bedrock of improved delivery.

Quite simply, the people of Johannesburg deserve better.

In the next five years, the City of Johannesburg can become a new centre of progress and prosperity, because the DA has proved that where we govern, we deliver prudent financial management, attract investment, create jobs, halt corruption, deliver services, build infrastructure and deliver a better quality of life to all.

Statement issued by Mmusi Maimane, DA Candidate for Mayor of Johannesburg, March 31 2011

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