Note to editors: The following speech was delivered by the City’s Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, at the full Council meeting today. Read more below:

Mr Speaker, please could we have a moment of silence for Mama Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe, former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, the queen of soul Aretha Franklin and all those we have lost over the past month.

Thank you.

Good morning, goeie môre, molweni, as-salaamu alaikum, shalom, Namaste.

Mr Speaker, I would like to start with some good news and ask councillors to join me in welcoming the newlyweds, Llewellyn and Cecilia Jenniker, who exchanged vows during a ceremony at the City’s new Safe Space last week.

They are here today in the public gallery and can we all give them a warm welcome and wish them well for the future.

This was indeed a very sweet fairy-tale moment for the couple who have been living on the streets together for many years.

They moved into the Safe Space in July and they will also soon start working via the Expanded Public Works Programme and we wish them every success.

The City’s Safe Space is a pilot project designed to provide a safe place to sleep at night, give access to ablution and storage facilities as well as social services and we hope to see many more success stories coming from this initiative.

This week we also have another good reason to celebrate after a trying two years with the drought as our dam levels climbed beyond the 60% mark for the first time since 2016.

Apart from the rains we finally received in recent weeks, the recovery of our dams has also been thanks to the amazing efforts of Team Cape Town and all their great water-saving measures.

On Tuesday we also hosted an interfaith thanksgiving for rain prayer service on Table Mountain where we again gathered with members from the various religious communities in Cape Town.

In May last year we called on the interfaith community to pray for rain when our dam levels stood at around 20.7%

As a caring and inclusive city, we know and appreciate the role of the religious community and know that our prosperity as a city cannot be achieved without their guidance, counsel and prayer. Sometimes people underestimate the power of prayer. We have prayed for rain and we thank God for the rain and for listening to our prayers.

Our good water-saving behaviour must continue because we are not yet out of the woods. We must continue to save water while there is water to be saved.

Mr Speaker, while the drought taught us many hard lessons and saw us work together for the good of Cape Town, there are still many key projects that we must remain focussed on to deliver to our residents.

Cape Town has recently been recognised as Africa’s opportunity city but, in order for us to stay globally competitive, we need to take the city to the next level and create opportunities for all.

A key intervention is for the City of Cape Town to decisively address apartheid spatial planning that keeps the majority of our residents away from opportunities to jobs, good education and healthcare.

We also need to improve safety in these communities and support business development.

The City must also be a catalyst for better integration of communities by speeding up release of the 11 identified pieces of land in Woodstock and the city centre while developing the Foreshore Freeway project. More pieces of government-owned land must also be made available for the development of affordable housing.

This will bring more Capetonians closer to opportunities, increasing our talent offering to international companies wanting to invest here.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has recognised Cape Town as the top opportunity city in Africa and placed the city 6th among middle-income country cities - behind Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, Shanghai and Mexico City.

Cape Town’s standing as an opportunity city was confirmed in the latest labour force survey results issued by Statistics SA. The report found that employment in the metro grew 4,8% year-on-year.

Cape Town is also the metro with the lowest expanded unemployment rate at 22,6%. This figure is far below the national rate of 37,2%.

If Cape Town wants to remain globally competitive, we must bring residents closer to opportunities and be a catalyst for job creation and investment as outlined by the City’s Organisational Development and Transformation Plan (ODTP).

Independent data and information collated and summarised in the PwC Cities of Opportunity report shows that Cape Town’s overall ‘opportunity score’ is higher relative to other cities with equivalent per capita GDP scores.

The report benchmarks Cape Town against 31 of the world’s leading cities across 66 indicators of urban success. Globally, Cape Town ranked 24th out of all the cities ranked.

A powerful signal to the public, business and investors is that Cape Town is ranked first amongst all of the middle-income cities assessed, and even ahead of some high-income cities like LA and Tokyo, for its transport and infrastructure.

To amplify our work of building an opportunity city, we are building a better transport network though MyCiTi, enabling economic opportunities through attracting investment and training while delivering on our promise to provide housing to those most in need.

As we know, at the end of the 2017/18 financial year in June 2018, the City, for the first time in its 18-year history as the metro government, exceeded its housing delivery target by 62%.

Mr Speaker, to help us uphold this standard and constantly beat targets, last month Council also passed a resolution for the appointment of four specialist teams that will assist in expediting the delivery of housing opportunities across the city.

Following Council’s approval, the City of Cape Town’s Transport and Urban Development Authority (TDA) will now conclude the four contracts for the appointment of multi-disciplinary teams tasked with overseeing the successful implementation of housing developments.

The teams for each of the four areas in the city will oversee and monitor the planning, design, and construction of thousands of housing opportunities across Cape Town.

The go-ahead from Council enables the TDA to streamline our planning processes, and thus, to expedite the delivery of housing opportunities.

Given that the contracts are in place for longer than three years, it means we do not need to issue a new tender for the appointment of multi-disciplinary teams for each and every housing project in the medium term.

Mr Speaker, I am also pleased to report that this week we announced a proposal for derelict City-owned sites in Parow to be earmarked for the delivery of 6 000 affordable rental units.

The City has identified several vacant City-owned sites and derelict buildings in Parow that currently attract anti-social behaviour.

We are proposing investment in these underutilised sites which will result in the provision of affordable rental units for families with a monthly household income of up to R15 000.

The City-owned sites that have been identified for development are grouped into four sub-precincts and are, broadly speaking, located in the vicinity of the railway stations in Parow, Tygerberg, Elsies River, and Avondale.

Given the proximity to the railway stations and the easy access to public transport services, these sites are considered to be ideally located for the development of affordable rental units.

New investment will halt the further degeneration of the areas surrounding the stations and will lure investment from the private sector that could regenerate the greater Parow area.

The City’s Transport and Urban Development Authority (TDA) presented the proposed Parow Precinct Development Plan to Subcouncils 4 and 6 last week and both subcouncils gave their in-principle support.

The proposal will serve before Council for in-principle approval that the City can dispose of the sites and assets.

Mr Speaker, we are also making good progress in improving communication with residents through the Mayoral Pop-Up Office.

Since initiating the Mayoral Pop-Up Office two months ago, we have visited six communities and dealt with more than 100 individual complaints ranging from housing queries to water billing and refuse collection.

I want to thank all the councillors who have joined me on these engagements.

Mr Speaker, one of the strategic pillars closest to my heart is our commitment to building a caring city.

As we do each year, the City has opened the submissions window for registered non-governmental organisations who work in the area of social development to apply for grant-in-aid funding.

This year there is R8 million in funding available and the minimum amount per application per project is R15 000.

Social service NGO applicants seeking funding from the City are required to submit proposals for programmes that work on the following social development priorities: vulnerable children and youth; persons with disabilities; empowerment of women; street people; early childhood development; and arts, culture and heritage.

The job of repairing our social fabric is a massive undertaking that the City and government as a whole cannot do on its own. We rely on the NGO sector and its proven its worth time and again.

Applicants for the grant-in-aid funding have to be registered NGOs based in Cape Town who are able to provide audited financial statements and other documentation like tax clearance certificates.

Application forms are available from subcouncil offices as well as on the City’s website.

Mr Speaker, I am also pleased to share the news of the City’s new R114 million industrial substation in Atlantis which will provide additional electricity and reliable services for businesses and residents in the area.

This new substation also provides a grid connection point for future independent power producers, which is in line with the City’s drive to diversify its energy mix to include renewable energy.

Mr Speaker, there is indeed great delivery happening across the City and one of the most effective ways for us to make a difference is by providing people with access to opportunities.

In this Women’s Month, we have the heart-warming story of the City’s most recent intake of apprentices in the Fleet Management Department.

Five female apprentices are completing their training on a par with their male counterparts.

The women, who are participating in the scarce skills programme, are a sterling example that no career under the sun is reserved for only one gender.

The City gave 12 students the opportunity to become qualified mechanics. The three-year City programme is aimed at developing scarce skills in-house.

The training programme includes both practical and theoretical block training with one semester completed at City workshops, and another at Northlink College.

The City’s aim for this project is to retain the apprentices who show exceptional performance during the training.

Mr Speaker, another bit of good news on the opportunity city front is the transformation we are bringing about through procurement.

The City is committed to redressing past injustices and to facilitate economic transformation.

For the past financial year ending 30 June 2018, the City is pleased to report that approximately 95,76% – that is over 204 000 out of more than 213 000 purchase orders – were placed with B-BBEE-compliant vendors.

This is up from 92,7% for the 2016/17 financial year.

The total value of purchase orders for the 2017/18 financial year was R12.2 billion of which R11.2 bilion was awarded to B-BBEE-compliant suppliers.

The number of B-BBEE service providers who conducted business with the City over the same period equates to 88,63% of the service providers used.

As an opportunity city, which focuses on economic inclusion, we will maintain a strong focus on transformation in our supply chain.

Mr Speaker, on the climate change front, the latest State of the Environment Report revealed that we have reduced our energy and transport carbon emissions by 4,1% between 2012 and 2015.

The reduction in carbon emissions is thanks to the City’s climate action projects which has seen less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, thus reducing our impact on global warming.

The city’s reduction of carbon emissions is largely due to a significant reduction in electricity consumption as a result of our energy efficiency campaigns and reduced usage by residents.

We have made good progress; however, the City is constrained from lowering its carbon emissions even further because of Eskom’s reliance on fossil fuels to produce electricity.

Electricity constitutes 64% of all carbon emissions because Eskom relies heavily on coal instead of renewable energy like solar and wind power to produce electricity.

The City is awaiting a court date for our case against Nersa and Eskom to fight for our right to buy cleaner energy directly from independent power producers.

Despite constraints, the City has implemented a small-scale embedded generation programme to allow residents and businesses to feed power generated from solar panels into the electricity grid.

We must continue our work to make Cape Town a world-class climate-resilient city and grow our contribution to reducing carbon emissions so that we do our part to protect our planet.

Thank you, baie dankie, enkosi, shukran.

Source: City Of Cape Town