The Executive Mayor of the City of Johannesburg Cllr Mpho Phalatse, delivered her maiden the State of the City Address (SOCA) at the Constance Bapela Council Chamber today, 21 April 2022.
“Today, we sit with a 10-member Mayoral Committee (MMC), which is the birth of the first nine political party, Multi-Party Government in South Africa – a government that has vowed to set their differences aside and work together to repair the ruins in our shared pride, the beloved City of Gold,” said Mayor Phalatse.
True to its promise, the Joburg Multi-Party Government tabled its immediate programme of action termed ‘The Golden Start’, flowing from the seven Mayoral Priorities committing to give residents, visitors, business, and civil society alike decent and accurate services from the City.
Mayor Phalatse pointed out that under the first priority of getting the basics right, Environment, Infrastructure Services MMC Cllr Michael Sun has ensured that every household in the city receives waste services weekly including in informal settlements. Pikitup’s strategy will be to work with local communities through cooperatives, to deliver waste management services.
In the next financial year, the entity will also mechanise its fleet for better efficiency, getting more done in less time. This plan will include the purchase of new compactors, street sweepers and other specialised vehicles.
To stabilise electricity supply in the city, Council approved the city’s Sustainable Energy Strategy in January. To support this work, the Multi-Party Government will be hosting an energy indaba in May to resolve Johannesburg’s energy crisis, a move which will see us introducing an energy mix, partnering with independent power producers and small-scale Energy Generators, reducing our reliance on Eskom, and ending these rolling blackouts.
In the meantime, City Power has extended its Power Purchase Agreement with Kelvin by 24 month to maintain security and reliability of supply to residents. In addition, the multiparty government will ensure an uninterrupted supply of clean running water to all residents through strategic capital investment initiatives aimed at addressing water infrastructure backlogs as well as securing future growth.
Mayor Phalatse said the City aims to invest R2.8 billion within the next three financial years to improve the city’s water services infrastructure.
MMC for Transport MMC Funzela Ngobeni initiated region-based service delivery blitzes under Phase 1 of A Re Sebetseng, launched by the Executive Mayor in February, a programme which brings together multiple departments and entities to focus on pothole repairs, reinstatements, resurfacing of roads, traffic signals infrastructure maintenance, cleaning of stormwater infrastructure and curb inlets, repair of guardrails and road markings.
Through the city’s partnership with Dial Direct and Discovery Insure, 7524 potholes were filled in just 7 weeks during these blitzes, making our roads safer and preventing costly 5road-user vehicle repairs.
As part of the second priority a safer city, under the leadership of MMC David Tembe, 1 800 JMPD officers have been deployed into the inner-city to restore law and order and stimulate safe economic activity. The deployment of JMPD points people has eased traffic congestion particularly during peak hours. The JMPD is strengthening working relations with other law enforcement agencies through various joint operations, including the newly established infrastructure protection drive between JMPD, GFIS, SAPS, SSA and Hawks Gauteng.
This was in response to the recent spate of attacks on the City’s critical infrastructure, plunging communities into darkness, and often affecting water supply as well. To contribute towards the City’s revenue collection drive, the JMPD has reinstated Smart Roadblocks, collecting in excess of R14 million in just nine weeks.
Mayor Phalatse noted in the third priority, a caring city that caring for poor and vulnerable residents is a marker of a city’s commitment to a just and equitable society. Through the Health and Social Development portfolio under the leadership of MMC Ashley Sauls I, two new clinics were opened for use by the public in Bophelong near Soweto, and Florida in Roodepoort.
The construction of the long-awaited Naledi Clinic is also currently underway and in the next three years, 10 new, modern, robustly sized clinics will be constructed in different parts of the city in response to current and projected needs.
The portfolio will continue to fight the scourge of substance abuse through the inpatient and outpatient treatment centres across the regions. Social Development will drive the development of the new state of the art Bertrams Multipurpose Centre near the Ellis Park Precinct in Region F.
The centre will house a community hall, senior citizens support, a women’s empowerment centre, child aftercare, youth and skills development, a basketball court and office space for regional social development services.
The City’s policies on homelessness, child services, food resilience and older persons are currently also under review and will soon be released for public participation. In the meantime, the migration of retirement villages from housing to social development as approved by council will be fast tracked. In the new financial year, social development will constitute an LGBTIQA+ advisory committee to drive the interests of this often-marginalized group.
Through the Expanded Social Package (ESP), indigent residents will continue to benefit from free basic services, while the debt rehabilitation program has been reinstated to facilitate debt write offs for the missing middle class, pensioners and the indigent buckling under historical debt.
With regards to the fourth priority building a business-friendly city, the Department of Economic Development under MMC Nkuli Mbundu has managed to drive the draft Informal Trade Policy through the relevant structures and updated it with comments from public participation. Once approved by Council, this policy will afford South African informal traders the opportunity to reclaim their trading spaces.
To drive investment attraction, the Multi-Party government has re-established strong relations with the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) as well as other business forums to bring back investment confidence in the city. Some of the highlights include the acceleration of Special Economic Zones at City Deep as a logistics and agri-hub, providing investment incentives for job creation, particularly among the youth.
Mayor Phalatse said the Multi-Party Government will continue to roll out more opportunity centres to support businesses and entrepreneurs. “We will ensure fair access to EPWP opportunities through an audited electronic system. Through the newly established Johannesburg Tourism Company we will promote business and leisure tourism as important job creators. We are also close to finalising the Informal Trade Permit System,” she added.
Next month, the City will host a Business Collaborative Conference in recognition of the fact that a growing, inclusive, and sustainable economy requires business and government to work together.
Mayor Phalatse said MMC Belinda Echeozonjoku through her leadership of the Department of Development Planning has started making it easier for the development industry to do business and create jobs. This means improving our services and turnaround times, levels of professionalism and responsiveness, and awareness of regulatory best practice. The city has started a long-term process of scrutinising our policies, by-laws, and compliance and investigation procedures, while also modernising our service offerings and the City’s application and permitting processes.
“The Multi-Party Government has initiated and scheduled regular Integrated Night Operations with the department’s building control inspectors and Single Law Enforcement unit (along with City health inspectors, EMS, and JMPD metro police officers) to ensure compliance and shut down problematic and non-compliant houses, places of worship, restaurants, nightclubs, and taverns. These operations have been monitored to discover and develop new and improved ways for City officials to work together on contravention cases and investigations,” said Mayor Phalatse.
The fifth priority entails creating an inclusive City. The Housing Department under MMC Mlungisi Mabaso is also promoting inclusivity through various interventions.
“Through the Upgrading of Informal Settlement Programme (UISP) – we are targeting 10 informal settlements in the upcoming financial year. We will be upgrading them to level three which entails provision of permanent municipal services including bulk connections, water services, sanitation solutions, public lighting, and roads storm water. This is aimed at giving residents of the City of Joburg dignity and to create a good habitable environment. In the upcoming financial year, we have a target of 2 500 housing units in Regions C, D and F,” she said.
Mayor Phalatse added that the City is also focusing strongly on the site and service programme which is aimed at giving people serviced stands where they are able to build homes for themselves. In February, 701 serviced sites were launched in Zandspruit.
The Multi-Party Government is aggressively issuing title deeds to provide security of tenure to our residents, whilst ensuring that as we handover homes, we run a concurrent process of lodging with the deeds office in a timely fashion.
The Hostel Redevelopment project will see the revamp of hostels and upgrading of Community Residential Units (CRUs). We are in the process of approving plans for the redevelopment of all the hostels to do away with apartheid spatial planning. The Johannesburg Social Housing Company, JOSHCO, has aggressively kick started various turnkey projects which will see an envisaged 3 500 housing units at the end of the upcoming three financial years. Together with MMC Mabaso we recently launched the construction of the Riverside Social Housing Development in Region A. Upon completion, this development will yield 1108 social and affordable rental units around Diepsloot, Midrand, Fourways and surrounding areas.
The Community Development Department under the leadership of MMC Ronald Harris is the key custodian of social cohesion in the city. Through the Boots on the Ground Programme, the Multi-Party Government has been highlighting infrastructure challenges while boosting employee morale.
Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo just launched the Naledi Park in collaboration with the local community and the Ward Councillor, creating a safe space for families to relax. Joining the fight against GBV, the Johannesburg Theatre Truck in collaboration with other departments, hosted a GBV Prevention Day in the beautiful Diepsloot Park.
The sixth mayoral priority is providing residents with a well-run city. This includes building a City of Golden Opportunities which costs money.
However, Mayor Phalatse said: “Regardless of the constrained economic environment in which we find ourselves, we are still obligated by law to deliver services to all residents of the City. With a loan market that is averse to lending money to municipalities, shrinking grants from the Provincial and National spheres, and a lack of liquidity in the market, the Multi-Party Government is looking at alternative funding schemes.”
MMC for Finance Cllr Julie Suddaby will embark on an investor roadshow to raise the necessary funds and attract much-needed investment to fund, among other things, the City’s infrastructure projects. “We also need residents to pay monies owed to the City. In this regard, we have enhanced our revenue collection programme through Operation Buya Mthetho,” she said.
“Residents, businesses, and government departments have been responsive to the Buya Mthetho campaign and have started to come forward to pay their outstanding municipal bills. We have seen an uptick in payments since January 2022; and we are currently exceeding our target of collecting R4-billion every month,” she added.
The City’s Group Corporate and Shared Services Department under MMC Leah Knott has also been contributing towards a well-run City of Johannesburg through various interventions.
Over the last two-years, there have been radical service delivery shortcomings due to restrictions placed on how and where people work, we therefore pleased to state that the 100% return to work policy has been implemented from 1 April 2022.
City storage facility at Hamburg where fire engines and workshops were being stripped was secured, and assets auctioned off which saw R4 million in income for the City. Other storage facilities and assets are being identified for disposal and new plans for the facilities developed.
A Local Labour Forum has been established to improve relationships with organised labour, enabling, among other things, for real labour issues within the city to be resolved constructively. Furthermore, Service Delivery Centres were operationalised in March 2022, which deals with streamlining the outage management process, proactive communication to customers and councillors and providing milestone feedback on restoration times
“In February, we held a successful Municipal Entities Annual General Meeting (AGM), which appointed a cohort of knowledgeable and ethical people who will serve on the boards of the City’s 13 entities, including the newly established Johannesburg Tourism Company (JTC),” said Mayor Phalatse.
In addition, the establishment of the JTC is aimed at ensuring that Johannesburg becomes a tourist destination of choice on the African continent and that it uses Conventions, Sport, Retail Tourism and Events as key drivers for tourism and economic growth.
Many of our municipal entities are responsible for front-facing service delivery programmes such as the supply of water (through Joburg Water) and electricity (through City Power) as well as Pikitup, which is charged with the responsibility of managing the City’s waste. Joburg Parks & Zoo that manages green spaces; the building and maintenance of roads through the Johannesburg Roads Agency; the Johannesburg Social Housing Company or JOSHCO, that provides housing and housing opportunities for the City’s less economically fortunate residents, are but some of the additional frontline services provided by the City to residents in a sustainable manner in keeping with the dictates of section 152 (1) (b) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
“Our ability to deliver services effectively and efficiently is directly linked to the City’s well-run entities. We must establish good governance as the gold standard, and in many respects, this must be expressed not only through visible and tangible service delivery, but also through clean audit outcomes from the Auditor-General of South Africa,” she noted.
During the 2020/21 financial year, not even one of Joburg’s entities received a clean audit or an unqualified audit opinion. A whopping R3-billion was spent irregularly, meaning a violation of policies and / or legal prescripts, during the same period. “I know it takes time to clean house, but we must move with haste and precision to get the entities functioning within the ambit of the existing legal framework,” said Mayor Phalatse.
The seventh and final priority includes building a smart city. Planning has begun for new IT systems to manage leave, employee engagement, learning & development, recruitment, performance management, consequence management, productivity, and enable hybrid working arrangements so that we are ready for the Future of Work.
“There are thousands of CCTV cameras around the city that are not linked, we have therefore started the process of linking different cameras to the Public Safety Integrated Intelligence Operations Centre (IIOC). This will enable us to better detect and respond to crime,” explained Mayor Phalatse.
Mayor Phalatse further noted that our City of Golden Opportunities must ensure that we work smart at all levels, which means introducing digital health records for efficiency and better patient care. “We will therefore be rolling out digital e-health solutions over the coming year with the aim of digitising patient records, integrating them into other systems nationally and allowing us to treat our residents in a more insightful, reliable and holistic way,” she said.
In closing, Mayor Phalatse said: “Building something great, and something that will last forever requires us to all consistently play our part towards fulfilling our vision of Building a City of Golden Opportunities.”
“The last few months have not been easy, but they have been made easier knowing that I have a team, and that Johannesburg has team that fully understands the issues facing the city and its residents, and works daily to solve those issues.
“I will give all of myself, to all the residents, all of the time, until my assignment to them is complete. I will never abandon them. I will always choose them.”
Written by Sascha-lee Joseph