Council speech – 5 December 2024
05 December 2024
Council speech – 5 December 2024
Madam Speaker,
Fellow Councillors and Team Cape Town colleagues,
Members of the public,
Goeiemôre, molweni, as-salamu alaykum, shalom, good morning.
I’d like to welcome some new Councillors who join us today for the first time.
Cllr Nkosintsha Hlohla (PAC)
Cllr Nombongo Kayi (PA)
And Councillor Deirdree de Vos, the new Ward Councillor for Ward 30, representing the Democratic Alliance.
This is the last time we will meet for a full Council meeting this year, and I want to thank all of you for your valuable contributions in 2024.
We’ve had a very busy year – both here in this Council forum, and out there in Cape Town’s communities – and we made important positive strides in 2024 towards achieving our ambitions for this term of office.
One of the standout features of this year, for me, has been the wonderful role that partnerships have played in the progress we achieved. And particularly our healthy partnerships with Cape Town’s thriving civil society.
I will say it again, we have, without a doubt, the most active, involved and passionate NGO sector in all of South Africa, and between them they help us do some serious heavy lifting in this city.
Today’s Council agenda contains a number of items that illustrate the value Capetonians get out of these partnerships between the City and NGOs, and really paint the picture of a whole-of-society approach to solving challenges in the metro.
One of these items is about plotting the way forward for baboon management in Cape Town, by entering into an agreement with the Shark Spotters NPO.
The Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team – consisting of the City, SANParks and Cape Nature – have identified this partnership with Shark Spotters as the best joint roadmap for managing a workable and sustainable coexistence with the baboon population across the peninsula under the Baboon Strategic Management Plan.
With Council approval today, Shark Spotters will be enlisted for various tasks, such as employing field managers and field staff, conducting ongoing research, communicating with residents, and responding to baboon incidents.
The benefit of this mechanism is that the Shark Spotters, as an NPO, can receive grant funding from the joint task team partners; as well as funding, sponsorships and donations from affected communities, businesses, the general public, and local, national and international organisations with an interest in baboon management.
Our working history with Shark Spotters goes back a long way – all the way to 2007, when we signed our first agreement with them – and I have no doubt that they will continue to provide an excellent service to Capetonians through baboon management.
Another item on the agenda today which perfectly demonstrates the immense value of our partnerships with civil society is the proposed approval of a Memorandum of Agreement with the City Brand Project NPO – known here as The Mission – for the revitalising and regeneration of the CBD.
Our CBD is incredibly important for Cape Town’s economic future, and it is critical that we not only maintain the physical space and amenities, but that we also position and market it as a place of growth and opportunity.
The continued revitalisation of the inner city is one of our top priorities, and this partnership with The Mission will go a long way towards achieving our goal of making the CBD a desirable destination with a distinct brand.
They will also help us raise funds from the private sector so that we can afford the kind of high impact projects that will enhance our CBD’s brand and value.
I am excited about the possibilities of this partnership, and I urge you all to get behind this agreement.
Finally, another item on today’s agenda for approval is the City’s Strategy to Reduce Rough Sleeping, an issue in which Cape Town’s civil society has been a wonderful partner to the City in dealing with a very difficult challenge.
This is a very complex issue, as people end up living on the streets for a multitude of reasons, and while they may share some common experiences, they are by no means a homogeneous group.
And while the City has been steadily expanding our own Safe Space transitional shelter offering – including the 300-bed Ebenezer Safe Space and a new facility for Muizenberg in the works – our NGO partners have also been working hard to increase their own capacity.
The Haven, having already boosted their Napier Street shelter by more than 60% earlier this year, will soon complete further expansions to their Kensington and Retreat facilities too with the help of the City.
We are extremely grateful to work alongside such committed partners as we seek to help our most vulnerable residents leave the streets and rebuild their lives.
On all these issues I have just mentioned, the City’s load is lightened tremendously by NGOs that share our vision and are committed to helping us build a City of Hope for all.
We could not do it without them.
Madam Speaker, I now turn to a topic that has far-reaching financial implications for hundreds of thousands of Capetonians, and indeed for the very economic future of our metro.
You will know by now that on today’s Council agenda, we will vote to send three different models of ownership and operation of Prasa’s embattled passenger rail service to the next phase, which is to develop a business plan for each of these three models, and then bring those business plans back here to Council.
These three models are the result of our Rail Feasibility Study, which we began almost two and a half years ago, and through which we set out to find solutions that could halt the critical decline of Cape Town’s passenger rail service, and reposition it as the backbone of public transport in our city over the next decade.
While there are significant differences between the various models, all three of them propose that the City should be in control of the Metrorail service if we are to restore it and get significant numbers of Cape Town commuters back onto our trains.
This is a big moment in our ongoing project to get passenger rail devolved from national government under management of Prasa, to local government under management of the City of Cape Town.
Before I go into more detail about what we’re voting on today and why this is so important, I want to thank every official who helped bring this Rail Feasibility Study to Council.
The completion of this phase of the study has been an incredibly long and complex journey, and for some it has been their main focus for almost this entire term of office.
The result is a comprehensive deep dive into every possible aspect of rail devolution, from how to optimise our rail network and operations, and how to upgrade station precincts in future, to exploring the finance options, understanding and managing the risks and ensuring safety on our trains and stations.
We cannot and will not wait around until national government is finally ready to engage us on this matter, which is why we set the ball rolling on our own feasibility study in 2022.
And while we have been hard at work these past two and a half years compiling data and exploring options, the President has simply kicked the can down the road with no clear deadline in sight for the long-promised National Rail Devolution Strategy.
In 2022, his own Cabinet’s National Rail Policy White Paper promised us a Devolution Strategy by 2023. By September of 2023, the President shifted that deadline out to some time in 2024. But when he addressed the nation in his SONA speech at the start of this year, he didn’t mention a word about it.
Then suddenly we heard, via the President’s recent weekly newsletter, about a new “National Rail Masterplan” that will only be completed by the end of 2025, notably without any mention of devolution.
We cannot wait any longer on this issue. And when I say we, I mean ordinary Capetonians who desperately need a better, safer, more reliable and – crucially – a cheaper alternative to their current road-based options.
This Rail Feasibility Study has calculated that lower income households will save as much as R932 million per year by switching their daily commute to trains, and that a functional passenger rail service could sustain another 51,000 jobs in the metro while adding R11 billion to our local economy.
This is why rail devolution has to happen, and the sooner the better.
Our Study looked into a whole range of ownership and operational models and, after a thorough evaluation process that took into account a financial cost-benefit analysis, an analysis of non-monetary criteria and a detailed risk assessment, narrowed it down to three options.
The first of these options sees the City of Cape Town owning, operating and maintaining the entire rail network, stations and trains. In this model, Prasa personnel will be absorbed by the City of Cape Town.
In the second option, the City will own all rail-related assets, but will concession the rail network, the stations and the responsibility for train operations and maintenance. In this model the concessionaire will absorb Prasa personnel.
And in the final option, the City of Cape Town will procure a large-scale, integrated rail service solution through a comprehensive concession.
All three of these options take into account the City’s policy mandate, the goals set out in our five-year Integrated Development Plan, and our broader constitutional mandate for integrated transport planning within our jurisdiction.
We are unable to fulfil this constitutional mandate if we do not have control over the backbone of an integrated public transport system: a functional passenger rail service.
The Study further estimated that the cost of operating the passenger rail service, allowing for inflation, would amount to R123 billion over a 30-year period, which would need to be covered by a subsidy from national government as well as private sector investment into the rail service.
So what will happen now is that, once approval of Council has been granted today, each of these three models will be developed into a detailed business plan.
Through these business plans, we will get a clearer idea of the viability as well as the possible funding strategies for each option. We will also then have clarity on the kind of capital investment it will take to replace dated assets and expand the rail network.
This last point – expansion – is important, because as you know, our city is growing at a rapid rate. Our passenger rail plan cannot only take the current situation into account – it has to cater for future demand, whether this is through increasing the capacity on existing lines, or expanding the service to new areas.
Our aim is to finalise these business plans by mid 2025, and bring them back here to Council.
Our march towards rail devolution has also just got a very important boost. We have just in the last few hours received from the CEO of Prasa, a signed full Service Level Agreement with Prasa in which they commit to targets for improvements to rail services, and reporting into a joint steering committee with the City of Cape Town.
We will now finalise the representatives and terms of reference for the joint steering committee.
This is something we’ve advocated for for a long time. It is required in law, but has been absent until now.
This service level agreement – and the coordinating structure that gives life to it – will ensure the City is better able to exercise its constitutional role of integrated transport planning in the metro.
Through regular, accurate progress reporting from Prasa, we will be able to exercise oversight over their Annual Performance Plan commitments to revitalise stations, introduce more train sets, recommission service lines, and improve the number of daily passengers and train trips.
The City also commits to providing the municipal services needed to support and enhance passenger rail, encourage transit-oriented development along rail corridors, and to expedite permits within our services and development planning authority roles.
We have been trying to get this SLA signed since last year, because not only is it important to be able to hold Prasa to account for the quality of the service they deliver, it is also an important step towards the full devolution of the rail service.
Agreeing with Prasa on measurable service standards as well as clear targets for future improvements sets the tone for when we take over the running of the service, as we would like to be held to the highest standards by our residents.
This is a big step forward towards improving the quality and reliability of the service through a legally binding agreement, and I am very pleased that we managed to get this finalised this year still.
Madame Speaker, as this year draws to a close, we can reflect with some small sense of satisfaction that while so much work remains, 2024 has undeniably been a good year for Cape Town.
Today there are more people in jobs in Cape Town than this time last year, and fewer people unemployed than this time last year.
Murder has come down by 7% year on year, and Delft and Mitchells Plain have fallen out of the Top 30 crime stats stations. Our officers have recovered 114 guns in just the last three months in Manenberg and Hanover Park using our ShotSpotter technology.
This year, we also celebrated an investment record, when we invested a record breaking R9,7 billion in one financial year in new and upgraded infrastructure in our city.
These investments are improving sanitation services, building new public transport, securing new water and energy sources, and more.
And sometimes progress is best measured in the words of residents themselves. A nurse called Sister Maree from Wesbank, a community that is still plagued by sewer infrastructure problems, writes to her Councillor “Thank you Councillor. On behalf of Wesbank clinic staff, thank you. Even though there are still many problems, we can see what the City is doing and we can see the improvement.”
I appreciate those words, Sister, and I assure you Wesbank, Kalkfontein, Eerste River, Nomzamo, Samora Machel, and other areas where sewer spills are still too frequent, are always on our mind, and are the main reason we are investing so much to improve our sewer system network.
We must also appreciate the smaller successes that are making a difference in people’s lives.
I am so pleased and excited to let Council know that this summer season, by Christmas Day, and for the first time in 15 years, 37 out of 38 of our public swimming pools will be open.
Some pools that have been closed for years will open their doors for children and the public to enjoy again this summer.
Observatory pool, closed for eight years, now open again.
And Emthonjeni pool in Gugulethu, closed for five years, and now open again.
We visited Emthonjeni yesterday, and it was so heartwarming to see the excitement of the children waiting to use the pool, some of them younger than five or six, which means they’ve never been to that pool before. I can’t wait to see their excitement when they actually jump in for the first time when it opens tomorrow.
As I said to our team yesterday, in the heat of Cape Town’s summer, a clean and safe swimming pool, with clean toilets and well-trained lifeguards, is not a nice to have, it is an essential public service, especially for those children in our city who have no other access to a safe place to swim.
I am grateful to the team who have worked hard at our pools to get us to this point.
Visitor numbers are already breaking last year’s records.
The City is looking cleaner as we learn and adapt and figure out how to improve our waste collection services in informal settlements.
Our CBDs are on the up, as we achieved the remarkable progress in dealing with homelessness this year.
And many of the things we have been advocating for for years, are now showing real signs of progress under the government of national unity.
We have unprecedented co-operation from the SAPS with a memorandum signed by the President that opens the way for empowering our local officers with investigative powers.
We’ve got the visa changes we long asked for to open up the Indian and Chinese tourism markets for the first time, and what a boost that will be to tourism jobs in the City.
And we are seeing national government finally take some responsibility for their many derelict properties.
A journalist asked me this week if Cape Town is getting an “unfair advantage” out of the GNU. I responded that advantages come to those who work for them.
In all of these things, Cape Town has been asking and arguing for these things for years, and now they are happening.
With all we’ve achieved, I can’t wait to see what more we will achieve together in 2025.
But before we think of 2025, I want to wish you all a relaxing and safe break over the Festive Season.
To those who celebrate Christmas, may it be a time of peace and joy, and may God bless you and your loved ones.
I look forward to seeing you all again in January, and to an even more productive and successful year than the great one we’ve just had.
Thank you, all, for your dedication to Cape Town and South Africa this year, and for all of your hard work.
God be with you ‘til we meet again.
Thank you
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
