Mayor's speech

28 January 2021

By working together and supporting one another we will get through 2021

Colleagues, fellow councillors, all our residents and guests joining us online today, as well as members of the media, welcome to the first Council Sitting of 2021.

Before we start today, on behalf of the City of Cape Town, I want to express my sincere condolences to the family, friends and loved ones of the late Councillor Courtney Van Wyk, Chairperson of Subcouncil 5. May he rest in peace.

I would also like us to please observe a moment of silence for all those who have been affected by COVID-19, for our colleagues, friends, family members and loved ones who have passed away.

As we start 2021, it is clear that the global COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a major impact across the world with numerous cities having to re-introduce lockdowns in an effort to limit the impact of the virus.

Here in Cape Town, trends show that we are thankfully emerging on the other side of our second wave. It has, however, come at a high price and affected all of us in some way. Many Capetonians have lost loved ones or have been impacted by the social and economic weight of the pandemic.

The second wave has taken the lives of some of our officials and rendered many of our staff unfit for duty or having to stay at home in quarantine. Strict legal requirements for occupational health and safety have also had an impact on our depots and licensing and revenue offices. This sometimes affects our ability to deliver services as efficiently as we would normally do. We are however doing whatever we can to mitigate these disruptions.

I want to apologise to our residents for any delays experienced, and ask that they please bear with us during these challenging times. I also pay tribute to our frontline workers in the City who are delivering all of these services under very difficult conditions, including our housing and emergency risk management staff who have worked around the clock to assist the many residents affected by fires in recent weeks. Your hard work is always appreciated.

As a result of some of these service delivery challenges I have had several meetings with the City’s top officials and invited Subcouncil and Portfolio Committee Chairpersons to join these meetings and share feedback received from our residents and what they are experiencing in the various wards across the city. I will continue to have these meetings so that I can ensure we are all on the same page about the needs of our residents and that those needs are addressed with urgency.

The National Government has announced some details of its vaccine procurement plan with a phased rollout aimed at different groups and which will continue throughout 2021.

The latest reports are that the vaccines will be arriving next week. We will be ready and ensure that as soon as the vaccines are distributed. Our City healthcare workers will be vaccinated as part of the first phase.

We will play our part in ensuring that the people of this city receive the vaccine as soon as it is available and I will brief Council as soon as the National Government shares more information.

In the meantime, we must continue to be responsible and be prepared for future waves of COVID-19, as the rest of the world is doing.

Our planning last year indicated that we would need to treat this pandemic as a chronic stress for some time to come and because of this we have kept in place our COVID-19 response measures, which were developed and implemented in the first half of last year.
 
I have also written to President Ramaphosa and National Minister Dlamini-Zuma calling for them to relax the regulations that have closed beaches and banned alcohol. The majority of beaches on our coastline provide plenty space for residents to socially distance, and many businesses that rely on alcohol sales, such as wine farms, are suffering unnecessarily.

This year, 2021 is going to be a tough year for many, but by working together, and supporting one other, we will get through it. Whatever we need to do to get through these times, and to help with ensuring the city bounces back better, we will do.

Speaker, this brings me to the next item on the agenda. Today I table the January Adjustments Budget. Executive Deputy Mayor, Alderman Ian Neilson, will cover this in more detail later today, but I would like to highlight some of the key adjustments being proposed.

• The total capital budget is adjusted from R8,6 billion by R1,28 billion to R7,3 billion. The total operating budget is adjusted from R44,9 billion to R44,3 billion.
• While the Adjustments Budget provides us with an opportunity to reprioritise funding based on revised plans, objectives and possible budgetary constraints experienced, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed an additional burden on the City’s budget, but which I believe we have successfully managed.

I want to thank City staff for putting the necessary plans in place to ensure that we could reprioritise funding where needed and continue to provide services to our residents.

In terms of the global pandemic, additional funds were required for the procurement of medical equipment for COVID-19 facilities during 2020 as well as for the re-purposing of facilities to meet COVID-19 service needs. Further funds had to be redirected towards our Community Services Directorate to expand the number of grave sites available at City graveyards across the metro and improve functionality at crematoriums. These are just some areas where funds had to be redirected and provides an idea of how quickly we had to reprioritise funding last year.

We have allocated R2,2 billion for a major upgrade of the Potsdam Waste Water Treatment Works, which will progressively provide new technology and additional treatment capacity between now and estimated completion in August 2025. The Phase 1 demolition on the property is already complete, and the project is currently at the end of the detailed design phase. The mechanical and electrical as well as the civil construction procurement process is now set to begin. This project is in addition to around 50 others that are ongoing to improve pollution levels in the Diep River Catchment, due to multiple sources of urban and agricultural pollution.

Speaker, I believe the adjustments we have made will set the City on course to continue delivering the best quality service delivery under trying circumstances.

Unfortunately, we have, however, seen a number of grant in aid cuts from National Government, one of which has resulted in us no longer being able to provide fire kits for informal settlements affected by fires, as we used to do outside of declared disasters. The City was the only metro in South Africa that provided this service until grant funding was cut. Where possible though, we will continue to look at unlocking funds to support those residents in need and do all we can to provide relief and assistance in general.

The extended hard lockdown of 2020 along with the ongoing Level 3 National Lockdown have impacted our various directorates in many ways.

From staff who have passed away and those who have had to self-quarantine or have been deemed unfit to return to work, to a COVID-19 related backlog created in some areas and a reduction in the use of some of the City’s services. We continue to monitor all of these impacts and ensure that measures are in place to alleviate the impacts wherever possible and within our powers and mandate.

The successive lockdowns we have faced over the past year and the restrictive measures put in place, are bound to have an impact on our mental wellbeing so I am appealing to all our residents to remember to be kind to one another. We are all in this together and kindness and understanding will go a long way towards easing the challenges and frustrations we are feeling.

I will soon be visiting some of our libraries across the metro to highlight the wonderful service they provide to residents and which should be taken full advantage of while many are working from home and have limited opportunities to socialise.

During these economically challenging times, instead of paying a fortune for new books you can get them all for free from our well-stocked libraries and even use our innovative online booking system to collect and drop off your books. There has never been a better time to read a bedtime story to your children, and afterwards enjoy a book yourself.

I will also be joining our Neighbourhood Watches (NHWs) on walkabouts across the city in the coming weeks and months. I will be accompanied by my outreach team who will be taking notes on any concerns raised so that we can make sure the issues facing our communities are addressed without delay. NHWs provide an important function in our communities and I urge our residents to please support your local NHW.

I have seen a number of new businesses open their doors in recent months, and I want to encourage any of our residents and entrepreneurs who are interested in starting their own businesses but don’t know where to start, to please make use of our Business Support Hub, which is there to assist you.

Our Business Hub has moved online and can connect you with business partners, funders, support organisations or City departments. They offer support programmes and advisory services; simplify communication between the City, other SMMEs and entrepreneurs; and provide you with access to new markets. I am looking forward to hearing about our residents’ success stories with the Business Hub in the coming months.

Speaker, before I close off today I must highlight that the Supreme Court of Appeal has agreed to hear our appeal over the South African Human Rights Commission and EFF’s call to essentially legalise and open the floodgates on unlawful occupations as well as to ban our anti-land invasion unit and all efforts to prevent illegal occupation of land.

We know how utterly destructive these objectives are, and I look forward to having our day in court to have this matter properly addressed.

As a result of especially large-scale, orchestrated unlawful occupations and instances where ‘shack farming’ syndicates are involved our residents have lost approximately 15 000 housing opportunities with 11 000 of these being located in Khayelitsha alone. The beneficiaries of these opportunities will now have to wait even longer for another housing opportunity, with some possibly never getting to see their brick and mortar house. Anyone participating in an unlawful occupation of land has no respect for their neighbours or for the Rule of Law which we all need to respect.

During the last months of 2020 I visited countless housing developments and handed over keys to so many happy residents.

Contrary to the false narratives of these toxic anti-poor NGOs we will continue with our housing delivery, with many new projects being started this year, one of which will be breaking ground in two months’ time.

We want to ensure that as many residents on the City’s Housing Needs Register receive the houses for which they have waited patiently, as part of our dedication to redress and to improve the living conditions of our residents.

Thank you.

End

Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office