SPEECH BY HELEN ZILLE, MAYOR OF CAPE TOWN
 
CHRISTEL HOUSE GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY
SWALLOWCLIFF ROAD, OTTERY – 9 November 2007, 10H30

Christel De Haan, founder and President of Christel House, Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Development, Simon Grindrod, councillors and officials of the City of Cape Town, ladies and gentlemen. It is an honour to be a part of this groundbreaking ceremony for Christel House.

This is the second major international charity project launch that I have attended this week. Yesterday I was invited to the Niall Mellon Foundation’s township challenge, where teams of Irish professionals have come to South Africa and volunteered their services to build houses for the destitute.

I can only say that I am very grateful for the support and attention that Cape Town is receiving from international humanitarians. The work that is being done benefits our disadvantaged communities, and it is an inspiration to us all.

As mayor of this City, I am acutely aware of the developmental challenges we face. We have a serious wealth gap in Cape Town, and we are experiencing social decay in parts of our city. A combination of poverty, broken homes, and rampant substance abuse have made living conditions intolerable in many communities.

In the City of Cape Town our key strategy to tackle these challenges is to encourage economic growth so that more job opportunities will be created for our people. We want to make Cape Town a more attractive city for investors by providing better infrastructure, better services, and creating a cleaner, safer public environment. These are the main services that our municipality offers in terms of the Constitution, which sets out the different roles that different spheres of government perform.

However, as former MEC for Education in the Western Cape Provincial Government, I often wish the City could play a direct role in education too. Because education is a key element that is necessary for the realisation of our vision as a government. Kodak founder George Eastman once said that “the progress of the world depends almost entirely on education”. Nowhere is this more so than in South Africa.

Our people need jobs, yet critical sectors in our economy are desperately in need of suitably qualified employees. Too few in our country have had the opportunity to gain the skills that would make our region more competitive in the global knowledge economy. Too many have been left unable to support themselves, and are forced to rely on the state to feed and house them. Yet, even the state is unable to provide adequate social support services, because it too suffers from the general skills shortage, with a lack of capacity in key public service areas. This is the single biggest challenge we face as a nation.

Christel De Haan and her organisation have given us the rare opportunity as a municipality to contribute toward the education of our people. Today we sign a lease that will make schooling available to hundreds of disadvantaged children in this community. Christel House has pledged to spend around R30 million on the construction of school buildings, sports facilities and recreational areas.

This project will also provide a stable environment with adult supervision and recreational opportunities to children who may otherwise have been exposed to a harsh life on the streets. We will be seeing the establishment of a community development centre, a business development centre, a skills development centre, an aids orphanage and a substance abuse centre. Children will be able to learn about discipline and values, about deferring gratification and about taking responsibility.

This complex will also offer healthcare and other services that are often out of reach to disadvantaged communities. Given the massive value that this project will add, we have agreed to lease this 8 hectare piece of land to Christel De Haan for up to 50 years. The property we are standing on today was set aside as a school site when the community of Ottery was first established, so we are putting it to its intended use.

To my relief, this has also meant we have not had undue red tape in releasing it. I would like to thank Councillor Grindrod, his Executive Director, Mansoor Mohamed, and the officials in his department for the role that they have played in helping to make this possible. And I would like to thank Christel De Haan for her dedication to this and other projects of this kind. Like Oprah Winfrey, she has realised that this is the best form of international aid that can be offered to a developing economy like ours. Giving people the tools to empower themselves and become agents of their own destiny is the only way that we can really address the developmental challenges of this country. A society of skilled, independent and responsible people is the kind of society that we want South Africa to become.