By Mukelwa Hlatshwayo
The Executive Mayor of Tshwane, Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, delivered this year's State of the City Address with his customary passion and conviction.
In the address, he outlined various milestones the Municipality had reached in the past five years, but also spoke of what the local government still had to do to ensure more efficient service delivery for the residents of and visitors to Tshwane.
Father Mkhatshwa began his address by greeting all present, as well as those who had joined via satellite. The city of Tshwane was born out of an area divided by racial lines; in acknowledging this, he outlined the Municipality's ongoing quest to pursue the now common objective shared by it as a municipality and the majority of residents of transforming Tshwane into a world-class city.
And this unity of the people of Tshwane he counted as a historical achievement in view of where it had come from. Once segregated, Tshwane was now a truly cosmopolitan city.
He touched on the key issue of improving the previously disadvantaged areas, specifically the Municipality's focus on developing them without neglecting the advantaged areas. The advantaged areas continued to have their infrastructure developed and maintained and were also receiving free basic amounts of water and electricity.
He emphasised, however, that a lot remained to be done.
He predicted in his address that, with the city spending over R150 million on electrifying houses, all houses in Tshwane would have electricity by 2012. He expected, however, that it could be earlier, considering the ground the Municipality had already covered (all houses on the electricity grid were already receiving a certain amount of free electricity each month).
The same applied to water supply. All households in Tshwane were receiving 6 kilolitres of free water every month. This, the Executive Mayor stressed, had been achieved despite their adversaries' worst predictions. By 2007, the undignified bucket system would, he said, be done away with as a result of work that would be done to extend the water supply infrastructure.
In terms of community development, the Executive Mayor spoke of the introduction of community development workers who inform the community about local government services and how to access them.
He said that more money would be invested in ward committees to improve communication between the communities and the Municipality through the ward committees. To further encourage dialogue with and the involvement of the communities, the Municipality had initiated a youth and women's assembly in 2005.
This, he believed, was especially important, as the youth and women represent segments of society that are the most fragile and in dire need of upliftment.
The Executive Mayor explained that the Municipality's job creation, skills development and poverty alleviation interventions took place within the context of the Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA), the initiative of the national government.
Among the achievements he mentioned was the Municipality's involvement in The Innovation Hub, which had created 575 jobs and was in the process of creating 2 000 more.
He spoke of how the Premier of Gauteng had remarked on the project's potential to nurture and grow enterprises in the critical knowledge sector of the economy. Other projects the Executive Mayor highlighted were the Klip- Kruisfontein CBD project, the Mandela Development Corridor and Freedom Park.
In terms of safety in the city, he reported that the closed-circuit TV cameras that the Municipality had introduced in the CBD area had reduced crime there by 27 per cent.
It was clear from this State of the City Address that the Municipality and its leadership remained dedicated to improving the well-being of the residents of Tshwane.
The Executive Mayor ended his address by urging all present to join hands in reinforcing the basic principles of democracy and making a meaningful contribution to realising the Municipality's vision of Tshwane as the leading African capital of excellence.
Presentation for Seminar
