Adoption of City of Hope Budget – Mayor Hill-Lewis Council address

29 June 2026

Madam Speaker, 

Fellow Councillors,

Colleagues in Team Cape Town,

Last night we bowed out of the 2026 Fifa World Cup, but we did so honourably, and Bafana Bafana made us all proud, having qualified for the knock-out stage for the first time ever. 

Bafana always plays in front of sold-out crowds in Cape Town. We love our national team, and we look forward to hosting to you in Cape Town again soon. 

May Bafana’s best performance in a World Cup inspire us all to aim higher and believe in our ability to do great things.

Colleagues, speaking of aiming higher, today is an important milestone in this term of office, as we vote to adopt the final budget of the term. This budget makes it possible for us to set our goals and our ambitions for Cape Town higher than they’ve ever been. 

I can scarcely believe that we’re at this stage of this term of office already. What a pleasure and privilege it has been to serve with this team, and how much I look forward to being able to Take Cape Town Forward with all of you.

Speaker,

In one simple summary: Five years ago, there was much of this City’s infrastructure grid that was under severe strain. The warning lights on the dashboard were flashing bright orange. Five years later, we have changed trajectory. 

Every single one of our major projects are either under construction or done. Many of them were stuck in the mud for years. But when they’re all finished, Cape Town’s basic essential infrastructure will be in the healthiest state it has been in a long time.

It will be ready to cope with the growth of the City. It will be ready to provide hundreds of thousands more jobs. 

In some cases, we will even return to a position where we have a bit of spare capacity. 

These five years, we did not run away from our problems, we dove into fixing them.

We have built a city where sewer spills are already down 30%. Where our vleis are getting cleaned. Where big new public transport projects are being built to shuttle tens of thousands more passengers a day.

We’ve figured out how to get affordable housing projects through the pipeline faster, and in greater numbers, than ever before. 

This is why we call it our City of Hope budget. 

Now as you know this is the second iteration of the budget, following the court challenge to the method of determining fixed charges billing. That means it has had a really extended period of public comment, and I thank everyone who has contributed to this process.

We are proud to table it for adoption today.

I have often said – and particularly in the past month, in the wake of the court challenge – that we cannot afford to make cuts to our capital budget, and we have worked very hard and carefully to ensure that the budget tabled today contains no reduction in capital spending.

In fact, in the process of making adjustments for this final draft, our overall capital portion has actually increased marginally by R50m.

This means none of our infrastructure projects have been compromised or put on hold, and this is really important. Because nothing contained in this budget is optional. 

We may be out-investing South Africa’s other cities combined on infrastructure, but we are still only doing enough to just stay ahead of the pressure in our city. 

Anything less – any cuts to our pipe replacement programme, our wastewater treatment works upgrades, our electricity grid investments, our road repairs, our waste management facilities – and Cape Town will start to slide in the same direction as South Africa’s other struggling cities. 

We made a vow that this would never happen here. Our promise to Capetonians was that we will do whatever it takes to move Cape Town forward, and to avoid the tragic collapse of infrastructure and services that we are seeing in so many other cities right now.

To keep that promise, we have to keep every project intact and on track. And that is what we are voting for today: Cape Town’s progress. To take Cape Town forward for all. 

As anyone who spends any time in our townships or poorer communities can attest to, we still have a long way to go in infrastructure investment.

We may have reduced sewer spills by 30%, and we can be proud of that, but, friends, there is more to do. We cannot rest until we have extended more dignified services, and ensured that everyone in Cape Town sees the benefit and feels the benefit of Cape Town’s success. 

But there is something else too. This is not only about Cape Town. Those other cities that are steadily falling into disrepair and dysfunction must and can be turned around. Places like Johannesburg and Durban are great South African cities, and it is not too late to save them.

What we do here in Cape Town matters to them too. Because we can show them what it takes to build a functional city, with opportunity and dignity for its residents. We can demonstrate what is possible for our entire country.

I know many South Africans have become despondent about our country’s future, and I can understand why. But we are on a mission in Cape Town to prove that the reason for that despondency – the neglect and decay and regression – are not inevitable. 

With the right people, the right values and the right plan, any city can be turned around. 

We have all those elements in Cape Town. We have incredible people right across the City – professional, ethical and committed to our mission.

We have a workplace culture built around organisational values that brings out the very best in the City, and keeps us honest and accountable to our residents.

And we have a plan for Cape Town that looks decades into the future. A plan fully supported by a budget like the one we are adopting today.

That is what sets Cape Town apart right now, and it can be replicated elsewhere.

Colleagues, today to we bid farewell to exactly one such professional. In about 48 hours, Commissioner Robbie Roberts will retire from the City of Cape Town. 

I have asked him to log on to this meeting, and I so I know he is watching us now so we can pay appropriate honour to him. 

There is so much I could say about this truly extraordinary person and colleague. I said quite a bit of it as his formal retirement ceremony last week, where he handed over his command. 

I’ve worked with many people, in many different contexts, over the years. But I regard it as a privilege to have worked with this man.

He is an exemplary public servant. He is committed to excellence above all else, and does not compromise on that commitment. He holds himself to the highest standards, and expects others to do only what he is himself prepared to do.

Friends, there is a long road ahead to fix South Africa. I firmly and deeply believe we can fix South Africa, but it is never guaranteed. It will take hard work over a long time, and for most of us, it will be the work of most of our lifetimes. But if we are going to do it, we need many, many more people like Robbie Roberts. 

Cape Town is a better place for what he did. Our Safety and Security Directorate is the most professional law enforcement agency in South Africa, bar none, because of what he built. 

No other person is as deserving of his retirement as he is, and I wish him and his family very well in the years ahead.

On behalf of the residents of Cape Town, I want to thank you, Commissioner Robbie Roberts, for your service to our city and to the public. 

Colleagues, 

I want to return to the topic of the budget, and specifically what we are doing in this budget to protect lower income families from the impact of the court ruling.

This was an extremely complex and difficult undertaking, and I want to thank our Budget team for the hard work that went into finding these solutions.

You will recall that the court ruled that fixed charges could not be determined by property value, which meant that the water and sanitation fixed charge had to revert back to water meter size, while the city-wide cleaning charge moved back into property rates instead of being a standalone item on the municipal bill.

These changes, by definition, placed a bigger burden on poorer and middle-income households and will lower bills for higher value properties.

This severely restricted our ability to cross-subsidise services in the metro, and so the budget we’re adopting today includes several new measures to counteract that impact and shield households from any increases.

We have now extended the rates-free portion on residential properties from the existing first R450,000 to the first R620,000 of property value, and this will apply to all homes up to R8m in value – up from the previous threshold of R7m.

We have also previously raised the income threshold for pensioners to qualify for rates rebates up to R27,000 monthly income, and that’s regardless of their property value. 

I have received a lot of correspondence from pensioners whose income falls just above this R27 000 threshold. I really take those letters seriously, and we will definitely look to expand this support to protect more pensioners in the next budget.

It is our firm intention to protect pensioners from the impact of rising values of the homes they’ve sometimes lived in for decades, and we will do that. 

But even at R27 000, this is by some distance the widest qualifying income threshold in the country. And this also includes lifeline electricity, a benefit which no other city offers for pensioners.

So we are proud to be able to support a budget today that not only keeps every part of our infrastructure plan intact, but also manages to shield lower- and middle-income households from the impact of the court’s ruling on our ability to cross-subsidise.

But colleagues, what I am equally proud of is something that seemed to get lost in much of the recent reporting on our budget, and that is the fact that Cape Town offers, by some distance, lowest property rates of all the metros.

Looking at South Africa’s five big metros – Cape Town, Johannesburg, eThekwini, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni – we see that our city offers the widest qualifying criteria and benefits for indigent households and pensioners. Cape Town’s free water allocation is the highest of all cities at 15KL, and it is easier to qualify for lifeline electricity than anywhere else, especially for pensioners. 

We also offer by far the highest rates-free benefit, with the first R620,000 of property value rates-free in Cape Town, well ahead of the next metro, Joburg, at just R350,000.

And to top it off Speaker, when comparing the newly adopted budgets for each metro, we see that the overall monthly household bill is lowest in Cape Town, even when adjusting for higher property values.

Speaker, 

Much has been made in recent days of the City’s unqualified audit status – the 20^th unqualified audit in a row.  We should expect nothing less in an election year, and much downright fake news has been generated around this.

While I am not surprised that political parties will try to misrepresent the facts, I do expect that they should at least read the details. 

Cape Town retained its unqualified audit status. In the last 16 years, the City has got an unqualified audit with no findings only seven times. Three of those seven were in this term of office.

This time, the AG made only non-financial findings. In other words, nothing related to money at all. Only four specific points raised about processes, not finances. 

While we don’t necessarily agree with those process points, they are just that: technical process points, like the nature of documentary proof relied on by a bid committee for one company’s proof of registration with the bargaining council, and whether a bid committee was entitled to take into account a bidder’s prior track record of work with the City as a different legal entity. 

The fact is that the City of Cape Town is the best run, cleanest government in SA, and every resident can always feel assured of our absolute commitment to integrity in the management of public money.

And this has once again been confirmed by another – our 20^th – unqualified audit. 

Colleagues, 

Most importantly, here in Cape Town you not only get the most honest government that cares for public money, and the best value on your monthly account, you also get a city that works. The ONLY city that works and will continue to work decades into the future, thanks to the investments contained in this budget.

We have come a long way in this term of office, and we have much progress to show, but our work is far from done. 

With the adoption of this budget today, we take another big step towards fulfilling our mission of building a City of Hope for all who live in Cape Town.

Speaker, 

Finally, I want to assure all Capetonians that the City’s Metro Police and Law Enforcement officers are extremely well prepared for any public disruption and violence this week, but I am confident that it will be business as usual.

I encourage all Capetonians to go about their daily business as usual.

Let us not be intimidated in any way by the purveyors of hate and those who promise only chaos and violence, including those parties here in our own Council who are part of stoking those fires.

Let us show the best of our City, the best of our country, the best of who we are as a people. 

Thank you.

Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office