- Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis marked his third anniversary in office with a speech outlining Cape Town’s progress and future plans.
- At a Tygerberg Business Chamber dinner, he detailed a R120 billion infrastructure investment plan focused on essential upgrades and energy independence.
- He also addressed issues of homelessness and economic growth, highlighting the city’s ongoing commitment to building a prosperous “City of Hope.”
On the eve of his third anniversary as Mayor of Cape Town, Geordin-Hill-Lewis addressed the annual Tygerberg Business Chamber dinner at Goedgeleven outside Durbanville on Thursday evening.
At the black-tie event sponsored by Lucas Real Estate this year, the Mayor reaffirmed the local business sector to be an important partner in the City’s mission to build Cape Town as he envisions, into a “world-class City of Hope”.
Hill-Lewis likened a City of Hope as a place where South Africans can once again see a clear path towards a better and more prosperous future where the business community has the biggest impact when it comes to the economic and job creation milestones.
“We all know that our country is not where it could or should be. Our fractured and unjust past, followed by decades of poor governance, institutionalised corruption and failing infrastructure has seen South Africa fall well behind our development targets and the progress of our global peers.”
With the worst performing economies in the developing world and one of the highest unemployment rates, Hill Lewis said it has a detrimental effect on the psyche of a nation.
“People lose the ability to dream big and they lose the motivation to roll up their sleeves and build that future. But hope is a strange and fickle thing. Just as it can easily be lost, it can also be resurrected. All it takes is a visible sign of change – some tangible improvements in your quality of life, some good-news stories from your community and a hint at more economic opportunities soon; and suddenly a society’s mood can shift upwards again.”
GNU
Referring to the recent developments in national politics, with the formation of the Government of National Unity (GNU), he said that despite the cynics most South Africans are cheering for it to succeed.
“Despite the often hostile and obstructive attitudes of some of the old government members who’ve struggled to come to terms with the change, this GNU has breathed new life into South African politics, and the impact on South African society has been huge.”
He emphasised that whatever the administration’s long-term plans for Cape Town were, they had to be backed up by visible, tangible, and immediate results in terms of infrastructure.
“Capetonians had to experience for themselves the changes in their communities, the changes in their work prospects, or the way they felt walking down their own streets. Because only then would they have reason to believe – reason to hope.
But the converse is true too. “If what you see and experience is so undeniably negative, there is nothing anyone can say that will convince you that the future is about to get better.”
Across large parts of South Africa, he said these negative signs have become a fact of life; things such as potholes, broken traffic lights, crumbling pavements, slum buildings and uncollected refuse.
“We vowed, three years ago, that this neglect and decay would never be allowed to take hold in Cape Town. So then we turned our pledges into priority programmes with firm targets and tight deadlines.”
The clearest evidence of this, he said, was the City’s commitment to the infrastructure investment programme of over R120 billion over ten years, that is more than the capital expenditure budgets of Johannesburg and Durban combined.
The bulk of this spend, he said, is on massive water and sanitation projects, as it necessitates the biggest need in a fast-growing metro with many people living in informal housing.
He said sewer pipes are being replaced at a record pace, while the entire bulk sewer lines along with wastewater treatment works are being upgraded.
Eskom
Pointing to the financial and operational messes at Eskom, Hill-Lewis believes the country’s electricity nightmare is not over.
“South African households and municipalities simply cannot afford what Eskom is asking Nersa for, and government’s recent announcement that it will take over municipal debt to Eskom is just a taxpayer bailout with another name.”
The imperative to end the City’s reliance on Eskom, he said, is as great as it was during the blackouts, a visible milestone in this regard being the recent sod-turning in Atlantis of the first ever utility-scale solar PV power plant in South Africa to be built and run by a metro.
This R200 million project will take roughly a year to complete, after which it will be connected to the nearby substation and start feeding around 7MW of power directly into the grid.
Homelessness
Discussing the growing dilemma of homelessness in the city, he explained the complexity of the challenge.
“We are working hard to resolve this as we cannot allow people to claim public spaces for themselves. The economic vitality of our city and its various business nodes depends on keeping these spaces clean, safe, and accessible. At the same time, we have a moral and legal duty to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens have somewhere safe to sleep.”
The process, however, involves time-consuming steps through the courts to obtain eviction.
But he assured the chamber that every single site of illegal occupation is in the City’s crosshairs, including those in Bellville and surrounds.
“We know how important this is to the survival of businesses in the area, not to mention the sense of pride and ownership that we want residents to feel towards their neighbourhoods,” he said.
He concluded in saying that the future of Cape Town is very much tied to the future of Bellville, Durbanville and the entire greater Tygerberg area.
“If every city had a Tygerberg Chamber of Commerce, South Africa would be in a much better position today.”
