Mayor’s Council Speech – Invested in Hope Budget adoption 2025-26
26 June 2025
Mayor’s Council Speech
Speaker,
Four years ago, we formed this City government on the back of a pledge to do more, in particular to build Cape Town into a city of hope for all, and the beacon of hope for our country that we all know our Mother City can be.
Being a city of hope is a vision – not a catch-phrase – and we cannot achieve it by kicking the can down the road, not when our higher purpose is the enormous task of enabling job-creating economic growth that lifts more and more people out of poverty.
We must do the right things now in laying the foundation for a city that is an even better place to live in future, even in the midst of the sad decline evident in so many other towns and cities.
That is why over the last four years we have raised the ambitions of the City’s infrastructure investment agenda, and why we continue to make the necessary reforms to ensure sustainable service delivery into the future.
And so today we convene this Council to pass two historic measures that will ensure the arc of Cape Town’s future bends towards hope.
First, we are here to adopt the City’s Invested in Hope Budget, including an SA-record R40bn three-year infrastructure programme, essential tariff reforms for sustainable service delivery, and SA’s widest social assistance net for struggling households and pensioners.
And second, we are here to adopt watershed amendments to the City’s Municipal Planning By-Law, which will make it much easier to build and develop in Cape Town, especially when it comes to affordable housing and enabling many more people to make the leap from informal housing to dignified rental units.
I will deal with this topic in more detail in an address to Council later today.
But first, Speaker, onto the business of the budget adoption.
This is not just a budget. It is a declaration of intent: that Cape Town will not wait for crisis to force our hand. That we will not let our children inherit a city weakened by our hesitation.
And that, unlike other metros, we will not let our infrastructure crumble before we act.
We are budgeting for the next 20 years, not just the next 12 months.
And yes — to do this, we’ve had to make difficult decisions. But they are the right decisions for a city that is determined to be a city of hope for all.
I would like to express my and the City’s gratitude to Capetonians for a robust engagement on this Invested in Hope budget, which took place over two public participation periods well in excess of legislative requirements.
As a city, we have had the opportunity to engage in a meaningful public debate about the choices before us, and what it will take to ensure we remain South Africa’s city of hope.
We have affirmed the critical need to invest in infrastructure, and a thorough public examination of our SA-record R40bn three-year capital budget has shown that there are no luxury or optional infrastructure projects that are not urgently needed.
We have all seen the warning signs our city infrastructure is sending us. We can hear the creaking and the groaning of a system under strain.
There are too many places where sewage overflows are a daily norm. There are still too many places where it is normal for children to play surrounded by waste. Let us never grow used to this or think this is acceptable. It is not. That is not the Cape Town we’re building.
The warning signs our city infrastructure is sending us are also a call to action. They demand of us that we act now — boldly and responsibly.
Today we are proud to present this infrastructure investment plan to Council fully intact, because we know it will ensure our growing city is an even better place to live in future.
Today we ensure that we will not walk the path of decline chosen by so many other municipalities who fail to invest in critical infrastructure.
Included in this budget is SA’s biggest public transport project – the new MyCiTi south-east route – as well as multi-billion rand upgrades to our city’s sewer, water, electricity, and road networks.
This is backed by major investments in safety and cleaning, with the forthcoming deployment of over 700 new officers to the ground including, for the first time, dedicated neighbourhood police officers in every ward, and ramped-up visible cleaning along our highways and in our CBDs. All of which will ensure our city is a more attractive, safer place for locals and visitors alike.
Public engagement has also resulted in meaningful changes from the initial draft tabled in March, by significantly lowering the proposed city-wide cleaning tariff, and the fixed water charge.
Because we do recognise that not everyone who owns a higher value property is necessarily wealthy or cash-flush.
As a direct result of public feedback, we have been able to find innovative means of further expanding Cape Town’s social assistance net to even more households.
And so we have extended the ‘first R450 000 rates-free’ benefit to all properties up to R7m, and raised the pensioner support qualifying threshold, increasing this to R27 000 income monthly, up from R22 000.
This will enable pensioners – regardless of property value – to qualify for up to 100% off their rates and city-wide cleaning charges, as well as lifeline electricity, including up to 60 free units and cheaper, subsidised per-unit costs.
And Speaker, I have even better news for pensioners today. We have even further improved this deal – already SA’s best – following the second round of public participation.
A 100% pensioner rebate will now be available up to R10 000 monthly income (up from R7 500), and a 50% rebate will be available up to R20 000 income. Discounts of 20% are also available up to R24 000 income, and 10% up to the R27 000 max threshold.
And that is not all which is new in this final budget. We are also including special debt write-off measures as an incentive for more households to enter payment arrangements with us.
To be clear: debt write-offs are not handouts. They are incentives for struggling households to make a payment arrangement and to, from a clean slate, begin making the necessary contributions to our City’s running.
Potential beneficiaries of these special measures may include:
• Pensioners and social grant recipients with debt older than a year
• Various types of civic and non-profit organisations with debt older than a year
• Active indigent customers
• Residents of city rental stock and BNG housing
• Owners of properties up to R7m with historical debt or interest accumulating on their debt
• Those with outstanding debts on final accounts older than one year (instead of three years)
Speaker these are the newest measures. We have also elected to retain the electricity price relief, and the cross-subsidisation principles at the heart of the original budget draft, in the form of fixed charges linked to property value.
The only other alternative to property value determining your fixed contribution to infrastructure and fixed service costs, is for everyone to pay a flat charge regardless of whether you are low-income or affluent.
We must be clear that lower-income and wealthy households cannot make equal contributions to infrastructure and fixed service costs.
It’s not fair, nor sustainable, and believe me, households at all levels of the property value spectrum do contribute their fair share within their means.
We’ve structured this budget to ask a little more from those who can afford it, and to protect essential services for those who can’t.
Electricity price relief will see thousands of households pay less to consume electricity from 1 July, and likewise getting rid of the former ‘pipe levy’ based on pipe size, and basing it now on property value, means that all homes under R2,5m will pay less for their fixed water charges than they would have on the pipe-size system for 25/26.
For commercial customers, we have heard the points raised by major commercial property owners like SAPOA. The City will allow commercial customers more time to adapt to the phased introduction of the City-wide Cleaning Tariff.
Therefore, in 25/26 commercial customers in particular will continue to contribute to funding the city-wide cleaning service in the way they currently do – via a percentage of their electricity price.
Speaker, this final revised budget will ensure that we not only protect households under R2.5m as this budget was designed to do, but that we also bring meaningful relief to more homes.
This picture looks even better for newly-qualifying pensioner rebate beneficiaries.
This final budget also further ensures that 97% of ratepayers won’t experience a 20%-plus increase in monthly bills, and virtually no one will experience a 30% increase on any reasonable household consumption scenario.
The 3% of cases where this year’s tariff reforms may lead to an unusually steep increase of over 20%, relate to homes of high value with very low electricity and water usage well-below the average household, likely due to large solar and borehole investments.
In other words, exactly the customers who the City encourages to sell us as much of their excess solar power that they can generate, in exchange for municipal bill credits, and even cash once the total bill reaches zero.
It also worth noting that this budget achieves all that it does while still maintaining the lowest monthly bills among SA’s cities.
Speaker, with the reforms and investments in this budget – which we’ve called the Invested in Hope Budget – Cape Town is following the path less travelled.
A path of hope over despair, and of prosperity over decline.
Even if we walk it alone, we know that in adopting this budget today we are doing the right thing for a better future.
That we will be a government that fixed, not one that failed.
And that through our decisions here, Cape Town will shine as a city of hope for all, a place where more people are lifted out of poverty by the rising tide of opportunity, a city with its best days firmly ahead.
Thank you.
Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office
